|

I’d like to thank all of those who voted for Scott Brown. You’ve done the coura­geous thing by mak­ing sure the rest of the coun­try can­not have a health care sys­tem roughly equiv­a­lent to the one you already enjoy in Massachusetts.

Most peo­ple — ordi­nary peo­ple — would not allow them­selves to sim­ply ignore the mon­u­men­tal shame­ful­ness of that. They would con­sider care­fully the national and inter­na­tional con­se­quences of giv­ing a Republican the 41^st seat in the Senate. They would not allow a poorly ran cam­paign, or some bull­shit about a sports team to get in the way of mak­ing the moral choice. Hell, I voted for Obama — south-sider and Sox fan that he is — for that very reason…

Fortunately, nei­ther I nor most other peo­ple, live in Massachusetts.

I believe that Joseph Goebbels once said that the SS per­son­nel in the con­cen­tra­tion camps were the epit­ome of strength: they were so strong that they could keep their con­sciences and the wrong­ness of their actions from get­ting in the way of actu­ally killing the Jews. It’s good to know that essen­tial spirit is alive and well, par­tic­u­larly in the sup­posed bas­tion of coastal liberalism.

A few months ago, I was sup­posed to get some help on my job. Specifically, some­one to work on the .NET side of things, which would free me up to do the job I was actu­ally hired to do: PHP devel­op­ment. He wasn’t my first choice, but he was sec­ond, in large part because of his mas­ters degree and (minor) expe­ri­ence with .NET. In real­ity, though, find­ing some­one to do .NET CF devel­op­ment is a total pain, let alone on a startup company’s budget.

On his first day, he never arrived. I called and called, and three days later he informed me that he was in India on an emer­gency, and had asked a friend of his to return my calls if/when I called him. His “friend” never did, so it fell through. About a month after that, the first-choice can­di­date called me up out of the blue and asked if we were still look­ing for developers.

I said sure, and he came onboard for the same salary as choice #2 (the main stick­ing point for him the first time around). He was sup­posed to start on or about the first of November, though the owner and him had those con­ver­sa­tions and it was never quite clear what exactly was said as far as a def­i­nite start date (if any­thing was). So last Monday, I called him up, and he was in Austin. We worked out that he would start yes­ter­day at 8am.

He too, never showed up.

Five more mes­sages and 30 hours have passed since he was sup­posed to start work­ing here. Reading Glen Greenwald today, I come across this lit­tle tid­bit, which he quoted from an Associated Press story from Monday (empha­sis is Greenwald’s):

In court doc­u­ments filed with the 4^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to for­eign­ers cap­tured and held in the United States.

Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indef­i­nitely on sus­pi­cion of ter­ror­ism and may not chal­lenge their impris­on­ment in civil­ian courts, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion said Monday, open­ing a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.

The story also goes on to note that the “test case” of this is a Quatari pro­gram­mer liv­ing in Peoria, IL (yes, that Peoria) — about an hour and a half south of my house. Nice that some geek is now sim­ply a test-case of Presidential TortureAlternative Interrogation Procedures, not a human being with a wife and four kids. If I were an immi­grant, I’d get the fuck out of the coun­try and not look back as well.

Of course, it’s also pos­si­ble that dude is just an ass­hole, and the whole “we can dis­ap­pear you” thing is just a coin­ci­dence. Not that it really makes the “we can dis­ap­pear you” thing much bet­ter, sim­ply less immediate.

BTW, where are the Democrats on this? Or was the plan to just get elected and let Bush’s phony “bipar­ti­san­ship” non­sense pre­vent them from actu­ally doing any­thing lest the media paint them as “Terra-loving San-Franciscamites”?

[Kinda sorry some­thing this snarky is the first post to PGO in months, but this par­tic­u­lar paranoia-kicker is a lit­tle close.]

Update: Turns out dude had a “per­sonal life cri­sis” that meant he had to stay in Austin, and would’ve called except for his dead cell­phone bat­tery. I guess Texas is worse than I sus­pected, since they appar­ently don’t have pay-phones or e-mail there either… *fume*

It’s actu­ally pretty amaz­ing how crazy TV has got­ten since I stopped watch­ing it. Obviously, I can’t know for cer­tain how crazy it is, since I don’t own one, but I read blog­gers talk about ABC putting on shows about “how soon is the apoc­a­lypse,” and sup­pos­edly some CNN anchor was recy­cling bull­shit from WorldNetDaily (the same folks who brought you the “American Hiroshima” amuse­ment park ride last year) about an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. And when that didn’t hap­pen there was sup­posed to be a nuclear attack on the U.S. in 2006-09-12, and then again in late September — or, for those read­ing this in the archives, a month and a few weeks before I wrote this, respec­tively. I could knock on wood, but I won’t: Fate can kiss my ass.

Politically, I think the U.S. wants to attack Iran shortly after the mid-term elec­tion, but I have an itch­ing sus­pi­cion the mil­i­tary won’t be ready in time. In which case a Democratic vic­tory may pro­vide some fric­tion — though not enough to stop another war.

And, for the record, America is in such a state cul­tur­ally that Mutual Assured Destruction is presently con­sid­ered the mea­sured response among the polit­i­cal class — thanks for vot­ing with your fetuses, freaks.

Meanwhile, another 10 mil­lion peo­ple slid into poverty this year. Those already in poverty were (unsur­pris­ingly) pushed even lower down. The wealthy are throw­ing the mid­dle class off the lad­der by the hun­dreds of thou­sands, and they knock oth­ers off in a mad scram­ble not to hit bot­tom, who in turn knock those below them off the lad­der, and on down the line until the num­ber of fam­i­lies liv­ing in their car swells some more. A few souls from the mid­dle classes don’t even bother to scram­ble and choose to swan-dive instead — much respect, thump thump.

I started writ­ing this post to point out that the coör­di­nated demands by vir­tu­ally every major nut­case over the New York Times’ reveal­ing the data-mining of bank­ing records via SWIFT—the calls for exe­cu­tion, harass­ment, lynch­ing, etc. — was a clear indi­ca­tion that Karl Rove is no longer a tar­get of Fitzgerald’s inves­ti­ga­tion. The much-vaunted “Fitzmas” is over, and you got a sweater. Huzzah. But then I real­ized that was silly, it sounds like it was cribbed from a uni-dimensional, dystopian sci-fi novel, which really sucks since it’s not fiction.

…sounds like it was cribbed from a uni-dimensional, dystopian sci-fi novel, which really sucks since it’s not fiction…

At any rate, it’s actu­ally kind of humor­ous to watch to Democrats floun­der and the Republicans go insane over the issue. Essentially, the Administration is tread­ing extremely close to fuck­ing with the money with their transaction-tracking pro­gram. I mean, how many rich peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions have their fin­gers in pies they would be embar­rassed to have them in? Monthly dues to the Arse-tickler’s, Faggot Fan Club?¹ A copy of the receipt in the hands of the U.S. Treasury Dept. Wire-transfers to drug-running para­mil­i­taries who are later impli­cated in a string of dead com­mu­nity and union activists? A copy of the receipt in the hands of the U.S. Treasury Dept. You get the picture.

Determining how that makes any sense is a task left to the reader…

So the Republicans have opened the door to allow the Democrats a chance to suck Capital’s dick, because Capital is now aware that the Republicans are wear­ing braces. Therefore, the goal of the smear cam­paign is to state, quite bluntly, that only a trea­so­nous, objec­tively pro-terror com­mu­nist would note the Republicans are wear­ing braces. Determining how that makes any sense is a task left to the reader.

Historically, how­ever, the chances that any of this infor­ma­tion will ever send some­one wealthy, pow­er­ful, and white to pound-me-in-the-ass prison is nil, regard­less of who is in charge. Clinton may have pun­ished the tobacco indus­try for killing his uni­ver­sal health care plan over the cig­a­rette tax hikes (which we got any­ways) with the 90s law­suits, but that’s a far cry from jail time. It appears the Democrats are either unable or unwill­ing to exploit this fis­sure pub­licly, they could have been caught off-guard by the venom directed at the Times, or they could be exploit­ing it pri­vately. I think the party is refus­ing to dis­close it’s motives pub­licly, because the DLC ulti­mately believes it can get it’s col­lege tuition paid for if it does it pri­vately. As the eco­nomic for­tunes of the U.S. decline (as they must in a free-trade envi­ron­ment), the only recourse the state will have against the pissed-off newly-poor are repres­sion and nation­al­ism, so I think the Democrats are wor­ried about giv­ing up this power now, since they’ll likely need it back in a decade or so.

I fully expect the Democrats will half-ass it on the abuse-of-power scan­dals, and will prob­a­bly end up doing what they say they want to do, if allowed: expand­ing the FISA Court again, to allow for “mass-target” war­rants. If so, I’d expect them to pitch it as a “nec­es­sary log­i­cal exten­sion of rov­ing wire­taps,” even though the abil­ity of the FISA court to issue non-FI-related war­rants in the first place is already a pretty broad exten­sion under the PATRIOT Act. Essentially, I think they’ll take another large step towards a com­pletely secret Star Chamber, and call it a check against the Monarchy.

Targeting America in Iraq in terms of econ­omy and losses in life is a golden and unique oppor­tu­nity. Do not waste it only to regret it later.
Osama bin Laden, December, 2004. (via A Tiny Revolution)

Whatever one can say about Osama bin-Laden, he is not stu­pid. He is smart enough to under­stand that the U.S. has blun­dered into Iraq — and thus smart enough to under­stand that it was essen­tially Bush, Cheney, and their fel­low con­spir­a­tors that did the blun­der­ing. I hope it is widely under­stood that if Gore had taken office the U.S. mil­i­tary would likely not have invaded Iraq, nor would it have farmed out bin-Laden’s actual cap­ture to Afghan drug-mercenaries.

He also likely under­stands that the inva­sion of Iraq has split the French, Russians, and Germans from the U.S. on mat­ters regard­ing the so-called “War on Terror.” All three of those coun­tries have actual expe­ri­ence with ter­ror­ism (Algeria, Chechnya, and the reported stag­ing ground for the 9/11 hijackers).

It is also likely that he under­stands the effects of his first speech to Americans — I would not be at all sur­prised if he also believed that he was partly respon­si­ble for get­ting Bush re-elected. Certainly his last-minute echo­ing of Kerry’s com­plaints about the Bush admin­is­tra­tion pro­vided some peo­ple with the excuse to vote Bush they were look­ing for.

Granted, that is a start­ing assump­tion, but I don’t believe it’s unrea­son­able given bin-Laden’s skill­ful abil­ity to manip­u­late west­ern media into believ­ing there is any such thing as “al-Qaeda”. Yes, that’s right, I said it. There is no al-Qaeda orga­ni­za­tion, and fur­ther­more, there never was. At best there are guys who know a guy, who know a guy, who met bin-Laden years ago. That’s it. People who take up inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism slap the label “al-Qaeda” on it so it seems like it’s big­ger and bad­der — and thus bet­ter sup­ported — than it really is.

The rea­son inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism exists is because ter­ror­ism is — iron­i­cally enough from Bush — the “weapon of the weak.” In case peo­ple haven’t noticed, there are about 5 bil­lion peo­ple who qual­ify as “weak,” which means that the tiny minor­ity of the world who wish to vio­lently attack the sim­i­larly fic­tional entity known as “America” must by nec­ces­sity take up the “weapons of the weak.”

I could con­tinue with the scare-quotes, or wax poetic on how blither­ingly stu­pid it is to have a War on a Type of Weapon (or how declar­ing war on the “weapons of the weak” is triv­ially reforged into what it appears the “war on ter­ror” has become: a war on the weak), but it’s more impor­tant to make the point: Osama bin-Laden likely knows that within the United States he is the “car­toon­ish supervil­lian,” just as George Bush, Jr. is almost cer­tainly a car­toon­ish supervil­lian to much of the Iraqi insur­gency. If he can read “Rogue State”, he can prob­a­bly get a satelite feed or a sam­pling of media clips about him­self. At the very least, he can get a sum­mary of how west­ern media por­trays him.

Change gears for a moment: if Jefferson Davis (pres­i­dent of the Confederacy dur­ing the U.S. Civil War) could’ve par­rot­ted crit­i­cisms of McClellan he saw in north­ern papers and then watch the mon­u­men­tally incom­pe­tent gen­eral stay in charge, why wouldn’t he? If you can use reverse psy­chol­ogy on your oppo­nents, via “their” media, why wouldn’t you?

Of course, you can’t per­mit your­self to assume that bin-Laden is using reverse psy­chol­ogy, because that means he stops being a car­toon­ish supervil­lian and come down to the level of the ordi­nary, manip­u­la­tive shits that most peo­ple run into on a day-to-day basis. Which essen­tially means we’re killed tens of thou­sands of peo­ple, spent hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars, invaded two coun­tries, and gen­er­ally pissed of the entire planet try­ing to catch an ordi­nary manip­u­la­tive shit who hap­pens to have money, a fanat­i­cal take on reli­gion, and a stack of body­bags on his eter­nal tab.

Osama bin-Laden using reverse psy­chol­ogy in inter­na­tional pol­i­tics also drags the entire lofty edi­fice down to the level of ordi­nary humans. The follow-up ques­tion is: Who else among the would-be god-kings is sim­i­larly petty? Could it be that the Bush junta itself is pop­u­lated by ordi­nary manip­u­la­tive shits born into sim­i­larly vast com­mer­cial and polit­i­cal empires? Could they be attempt­ing to use a fel­low manip­u­la­tive shit as an excuse to try and col­o­nize access to the largest oil reserves on the planet, shortly before peak oil — just as bin-Laden is attempt­ing to use Bush to build an “Islamic” Empire?

Though in fair­ness, I sup­pose if you have only ever viewed the world through limo­sine win­dows, it might be easy enough to over­look that there are mil­lions of peo­ple who — by virtue of liv­ing there already — con­sider the oil theirs.

Update: Credited ATR for car­toon­ish supervil­liany crack. Damnable assumptions.