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 41st 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.

1. I live in Chicago
2. I contributed money to Obama’s campaign
3. Emanuel is the representative for my district

To be honest, the main reason I had for bothering to vote in the election before the bailout was to vote against Rep. Emanuel. Primarily for his efforts to oust Dean in favor of Harold Ford—in spite of the obvious “right time” for Dean’s 50-state strategy. However, after learning that he and Frank were the only ones in Congress who appeared to have any clue about what was going on, why those happenings were so dangerous, and why the national government had to step in, that choice became an ambivalent one.

Whatever your complaints against someone, you have to respect them when they know what they are doing, and what they are doing is directly related to the biggest crisis in two generations—as opposed to the rest of the House, which refused to pass an emergency bill until after they added another $300bn worth of absolutely pure bullshit.

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 4th 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*

Color me cynical, but why is this such a shock? This is the same crowd that spent a large chunk of 1992 decrying Clinton’s admission that he was too stupid to use a weed bong in 1968—and then turned right around and claimed that Bush’s arrest for driving under the influence of cocaine in 1979 was OK because he later claimed to have found Jeebus.

I mean, come on. Clinton says he almost smoked weed (“It was Joe’s weed, Dad, and I didn’t even inhale!” followed by the sheepish pseudo-boasts to friends later “…but I wish I had!”), and gets trounced as completely incapable of being President. Bush did coke often enough to get arrested for it, but that’s different, because (like most stunning hypocrites and assholes) he played the Repentence Card with the Jesus Enhancement (+5).

Meanwhile, the Democrats didn’t really say much about Bush’s coke usage, because they had previously defended Clinton exactly the same way that the Republicans were defending Bush. The Democrats had shame (albeit misplaced—coke is a hard drug, weed isn’t) and the Republicans had none.

Of course, for that to play a part in the elections, people have to remember what happened more than a month ago, and let that knowledge affect their decisions. Which is what the Republicans appear to be counting on their followers skipping this time around as well.

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.

Which is the real point about this story: candidates from both parties are actively courting what amounts to the KKK vote: George Allen calls an Asian-Indian kid a monkey like it was nothing; a reporter outs Allen as a Jew.

It’s the most vile, disgusting debasement of politics that I’ve seen in my adult life, and there is no excuse for it. It’s 2006, gentlemen, scarcely concealed racist crap as an electoral strategy is like, sooo 1988. As a good friend of mine used to say when confronted with that kind of shocking, throwback racism: They still make people like you?

Apparently so, and they’re still thick as theives in Virginia.

To add a rather quaint, pre-Internets layer to the story, party hacks up here (i.e. the North) are making hay by painting the other team’s player as a bigot—an obvious embarrassment to their party. So far the Democrats have had better luck at this than the Republicans, in part because Webb appears to be smart enough to know what “plausible deniability” means—have people not linked to you actually do the dirty work—whereas Allen’s bigotry tends to come out of his own dumbassed mouth.

…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.

I should also note that in spite of my belief that Daily Kos is a horrendous (though obvious) shill for the Democratic Party, and my revulsion at Mr. Markos’ views that social issues such as womens’ and gay persons’ rights are expendable in the name of electoral victory—which I believe to be the very worst form of opportunism, that which harms others who are already discriminated against—I do agree with their decision not to publish the anti-semitic tripe thrown out by Mr. Shropshire.

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.

If nothing else, the idea that it’s somehow in the Bush Administration’s best interest to claim the NSA spying program was some advanced data mining procedure—and thus be able to wave the magic “it’s new technology, we can do whatever” wand—should suffice.

Most people in the United States are unconcerned with or for people they don’t know. The don’t care if you’re having a bad day. They don’t care if you’re getting fired. They tend to care about themselves, their families, their friends, and their toys, generally in that order.

Many people fully desire the government trample over any rights, any liberties, anyone they can in order to get “the bad guys.” Of course, who “the bad guys” are has been steadily morphing from a pack of right-wing fundamentalist nutjobs over there into “secular humanists” over here, but that’s another rant.

So long as the President and his fellows are seen to be stomping on the rights of those declared bad, he’s OK in their book, because he isn’t stomping on them. Data-mining, however, is stomping on their rights. There is no way around it: if the government is listening to all phone calls, the government is listening to all phone calls. Including those who give two shits about anyone but themselves. So long as it’s just Wiretapping++, then it doesn’t affect them, and they don’t have to pay attention. However, if the NSA is conducting data-mining, even the most self-centered of the un-enlightened egoists has a reason to oppose the Bush Administration.

Of course, they may be able to skate by legally using the afforementioned magic wand (the courts being notorious suckers for such rancorous arguments), but that also means an involved body-politic pissed at the right wing, which they want even less.