Out of My Mind

After 712 posts, this blog has been moved:

http://thesyndicalist.blogspot.com

The reason for the move is totally not worth going into let alone the time needed to do so.

However, the new name in the URL will make it easier for the NSA to find us and make friends with us because we want to make friends with people supposedly protecting us -- or at least spying on us for our own damn good.

The great and wonderful Nicholas von Hoffman explains it all -- for dummies :)

From the War Room, wonderful news for haters of democracy and freedom i.e. our leaders and their supporters:

The Bush administration scored a major victory Thursday in its efforts to criminally prosecute journalists and others involved in the leaking and reporting of classified information. A federal district court in Virginia refused to dismiss a criminal indictment brought by the Bush Justice Department under the Espionage Act of 1917 against two former employees of the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), who are alleged to have received classified information from a former Bush defense department official, and then passed it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. Background on this extremely important case -- and the way in which it is being used by the Bush administration to enhance their ability to prosecute journalists -- can be found here.

In essence, this is the first time the U.S. Government has ever prosecuted anyone under the Espionage Act who was not a government employee and who did not have a security clearance. What is extraordinary about the prosecution is that the defendants are private citizens who merely received and disseminated classified information from a government employee -- something which investigative journalists, by definition, do every day. The Bush administration contended, and the court today ruled, that such conduct can be the basis for being charged with felony violations of the Espionage Act.

The essence of the district court's ruling (.pdf) today is that the Espionage Act authorizes the federal government to prosecute even private citizens (and therefore, presumably, journalists) who knowingly receive and transmit classified information. As the court put it (p. 53): "the government can punish those outside of the government for the unauthorized receipt and deliberate retransmission of information relating to the national defense."

The court additionally ruled that the imperatives of national security outweigh any First Amendment interests which a citizen might have in publicizing such information. As Secrecy News points out, this ruling would almost certainly expose those who revealed Abu Grahib abuses to criminal prosecution. It also strongly bolsters the Bush administration's ability to prosecute journalists involved in the reporting of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program and the secret, lawless Eastern European prisons revealed late last year by the Washington Post's Dana Priest.

The GOP 2006 playbook is here.

Short version: Lie and spread fear.

This is from the Journal Op-ed page so of course it's demented crap but this guy has it so exactly wrong and ass-backwards. Israel, with US enabling, has weakened its position with the Lebanese excursion, as it were. Case close. And if these rightwing nutjobs see it as simple defense they're very mistaken -- and any Israeli reads that as true support for a demented policy birthed in military ignorance and political weakness -- well, God bless him or her. They'll need it....

However, the world as we know it today -- post-Holocaust, post-9/11, post-sanity -- is not cooperating. Given the realities of the new Middle East, perhaps it is time for a reality check. For this reason, many Jewish liberals are surrendering to the mindset that there are no solutions other than to allow Israel to defend itself -- with whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, the inevitability of Israel coincides with the inevitability of anti-Semitism.

This is what more politically conservative Jews and hardcore Zionists maintained from the outset. And it was this nightmare that the Jewish left always refused to imagine. So we lay awake at night, afraid to sleep. Surely the Arabs were tired, too. Surely they would want to improve their societies and educate their children rather than strap bombs on to them.

If the Palestinians didn't want that for themselves, if building a nation was not their priority, then peace in exchange for territories was nothing but a pipe dream. It was all wish-fulfillment, morally and practically necessary, yet ultimately motivated by a weary Israeli society -- the harsh reality of Arab animus, the spiritual toll that the occupation had taken on a Jewish state battered by negative world opinion.

Despite the deep cynicism, however, Israel knew that it must try. It would have to set aside nearly 60 years of hard-won experience, starting from the very first days of its independence, and believe that the Arab world had softened, would become more welcoming neighbors, and would stop chanting: "Not in our backyard -- the Middle East is for Arabs only."

It is true that Israel has entered into peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan that have brought some measure of historic stability to the region. But with Israel having withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza, and with Israeli public opinion virtually united in favor of near-total withdrawal from the West Bank, why are rockets being launched at Israel now, why are their soldiers being kidnapped if the aspirations of the Palestinian people, and the intentions of Hamas and Hezbollah, stand for something other than the total destruction of Israel? And if Palestinians and the Lebanese are electing terrorists and giving them the portfolio of statesmen, then what message is being sent to moderate voices, what incentives are there to negotiate, and how can any of this sobering news be recast in a more favorable light?

The Jewish left is now in shambles. Peace Now advocates have lost their momentum, and, in some sense, their moral clarity. Opinion polls in Israel are showing near unanimous support for stronger incursions into Lebanon. And until kidnapped soldiers are returned and acts of terror curtailed, any further conversations about the future of the West Bank have been set aside.

Not unlike the deep divisions between the values of red- and blue-state America, world Jewry is being forced to reconsider all of its underlying assumptions about peace in the Middle East. The recent disastrous events in Lebanon and Gaza have inadvertently created a newly united Jewish consciousness -- bringing right and left together into one deeply cynical red state.

The rest is here.

An Open Letter to Ehud Olmert

Dear Ehud:

Just in case you haven’t figured it out, Israel has lost the war so for the sake of your nation’s security, you better be working on a plan for the earliest possible cessation – well, not of hostilities but stupidity.

Again, the radical right-wing habit of talking trash from a position of weakness resulting in a completely pointless military excursion – excuse me – avoidable disaster.

Let me put it this way: You have weakened the security of Eretz Yisroel as well as the Middle East and points beyond.

In case you still don’t understand, you’ve empowered Hezbollah, weakened the non-sectarian Lebanese government (which wasn’t much to begin with but was at least a start), empowered Iran and radicalized more Islamofascists.

And I’m very scared that either you had no idea what you were getting or worse the Mossad was clueless.

(Note to myself: Add to those never to vote for: tough-talking pussies.)

VTY, &c.

Not here:

All this we know. Less well remembered nowadays, though -- in fact, almost never discussed in the major media -- was another implicit prong of the argument: that invading Iraq would be cheap and easy, leaving plenty of resources for other purposes. When White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey stumbled off message in September 2002 with his prediction that war could cost $100 billion to $200 billion, the administration flew into crisis mode. Budget Director Mitch Daniels was trotted out to label the estimate “very, very high.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz opined -- in testimony to Congress, no less -- that reconstruction would cost virtually nothing in light of Iraq’s promising oil revenues. Daniels proffered an estimate in the $50 billion to $60 billion range, substantially less than the $80 billion inflation-adjusted cost of the Persian Gulf War. Lindsey, famously, was soon after fired -- for his troublesome cost estimates and, reportedly, the President’s annoyance at his poor personal fitness habits.



By April 2006, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) inquiry concluded that Lindsey’s estimate was, indeed, way off -- but in the other direction. Around $261 billion had already been spent. Given the human stakes, it may seem crass to worry overly much about the dollar cost of a military conflict. But the fact that a CRS report is needed at all, as opposed to the straightforward accounting that either the White House or the Pentagon could surely provide were they so inclined, points to the basic reality that the war’s proponents are continuing the prewar pattern of covering up the costs. And with good reason: They’re enormous. Scandalously enormous.

The same CRS report indicated that before it ends, the war will likely cost somewhat more than the $549 billion spent (adjusted for inflation) in the much more lethal Vietnam War. But even this figure will likely prove to be off by hundreds of billions of dollars because it accounts only for funds directly appropriated for war fighting. As Linda Bilmes, a leading Harvard budgetary expert, and Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz point out in their January 2006 paper, “The Economic Costs of the Iraq War,” the spending captured by the CRS, even in strict budgetary terms, is “only the tip of a very deep iceberg.”

The rest of the sordid, ugly story is here.

There's a lot of stuff here. Not the whole story but a start. Of course their sins are greater than just this stuff.

Humor in the Wall Street Journal (sub required)?

Our leaders are "pondering" for a post-Fidel era? They're great at that. We're waiting for them to start pondering Iraq and what a fabulous job they've done weakening our national security.

"Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything." -- Frank Dane

It obviously works....

As you reap, so shall you sow.

Mel's a radical Christian, a Catholic whose Catholicism is not very Catholic in pretty much any sense of the word. As such, a certain level of anti-everyone-elsism is part of his beliefs. Obviously not in an overt way but it's there.

Here's today's thought exercise: Is a miniseries predicated depicting the Holocaust from the point of view of Christians who help Jews likely to put a very accurate spin on what the Holocaust was about? Or more likely to focus on how strong Christian beliefs enable a couple of believers to help some Jews escape the Holocaust? Is the latter therefor likely to be historically accurate other than as a sidebar as it were?

In other words, from a historical perspective, at its most benign, who needs it?

And lets skip over "Passion" other than to say a sensitive believer would not have made a movie based on Anti-semitic medieval passion plays buts a good old bio of a(n allegedly) loving god.

So his asking Jews to help the healing is hypocritical crap.

Still, despite being a crap actor, he looks cute in his mug shot. Maybe even g@odd#m cute :)

And actually, IIRC, this is only Gibson's first run-in with the law with anti-Semitic overtones. I'm reminded, so to speak, by the accompanying graphic and by this one.

Meanwhile, the indictment is here in its glory.

And Bill Maher of all people nails it pretty well (obviously his Jewish half talking, not the good... Catholic boy half).

So post-democratic America.

But then, what does one expect from our current leadership? Resistance to the corruption of the proto-fascist state: Big contributions from Diebold and its ilk plus the ease of riggng elections -- how can they proto-fascists resist? And their principals benefit -- the principal of power at all costs.

The bad news is here.

Echoes of the Nixon era

Arlen Specter's FISA bill would put President Bush above the rule of law, just as an earlier president would've wanted.

By Glenn Greenwald

Jul. 31, 2006 | With one piece of legislation, Sen. Arlen Specter seeks to expand the Bush administration's radical theory of executive power beyond the wildest dreams of Dick Cheney or even John Yoo. Just when it looked as though some semblance of checks and balances was being restored, Specter -- the Pennsylvania Republican who masqueraded for months as a tenacious opponent of the White House -- offers a bill that would strike an immeasurable blow for the Bush vision of an imperial presidency.

* * *

In reality, Specter does not want to amend the mandates of FISA so much as abolish them. His bill makes it optional, rather than mandatory, for the president to subject himself to judicial oversight when eavesdropping on Americans, in effect returning the nation to the pre-FISA era. Essentially, the president would be allowed to eavesdrop at will, precisely the situation that led to the surveillance abuses of the Nixon White House and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.

The whole obscene story is here....

Let's try and stop this.

Have I said I don't think electoral politics offers a solution for all the damage Our Leaders have done?

Two depressing to even quote so here's the link.

Q: Mr. President, both of you, I'd like to ask you about the big picture that you're discussing.

Mr. President, three years ago, you argued that an invasion of Iraq would create a new stage of Arab-Israeli peace. And yet today there is an Iraqi prime minister who has been sharply critical of Israel.

Arab governments, despite your arguments, who first criticized Hezbollah, have now changed their tune. Now they're sharply critical of Israel.

And despite from both of you warnings to Syria and Iran to back off support from Hezbollah, effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored.

So what has happened to America's clout in this region that you've committed yourself to transform?

Bush: David, it's an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.

For a while, American foreign policy was just, Let's hope everything is calm - kind of, managed calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

And so we have, we've taken a foreign policy that says: On the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice.

And make no mistake: They're still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for.

In the long term, to defeat this ideology - and they're bound by an ideology - you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom.

And, look, I fully understand some people don't believe it's possible for freedom and democracy to overcome this ideology of hatred. I understand that. I just happen to believe it is possible.

And I believe it will happen.

And so what you're seeing is, you know, a clash of governing styles.

For example, you know, the notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them.

And so they respond. They've always been violent.

You know, I hear this amazing kind of editorial thought that says, all of a sudden, Hezbollah's become violent because we're promoting democracy. They have been violent for a long period of time. Or Hamas?

One reason why the Palestinians still suffer is because there are militants who refuse to accept a Palestinian state based upon democratic principles.

And so what the world is seeing is a desire by this country and our allies to defeat the ideology of hate with an ideology that has worked and that brings hope.

And one of the challenges, of course, is to convince people that Muslims would like to be free, you know, that there's other people other than people in Britain and America that would like to be free in the world.

There's this kind of almost – you know, kind of a weird kind of elitism that says well maybe - maybe certain people in certain parts of the world shouldn't be free; maybe it's best just to let them sit in these tyrannical societies.

And our foreign policy rejects that concept. We don't accept it. And so we're working.

(Link.)

Chapter 97,824.

Our Leader dispenses his wisdom and understanding of an important foreign policy issue.

Gotta increase the minimum wage. Have something to give to the voters besides two more years in the Iraq quagmire.

A minimum wage increase.

Including in the bill estate tax repeal.

How stupid do they think we are (rhetorical). But why should they worry? You don't see this being covered with any significance or focus in the corrupt Big Media.

We've got here:

Man charged after videotaping police

And here.

Cell Phone Picture Called Obstruction Of Justice

Man Arrested For Shooting Photo Of Police Activity

As they say, even paranoids have enemies.

As we move towards an undemocratic Christian theocracy here, the democratic secular tolerance for non-Christians ebbs away. Like here. And here. Fanning the flames of war in the Middle East isn't enough (can't wait for Armageddon when we have the power to bring it on).

And of course no one should expect anything like tolerance from a Christo-fascist second-rate actor/crappy director -- so when caught driving drunk (oops! allegedly drunk), blame the Jews. Of course.

UPDATE: Gibson blames it on being a life-long alcoholic. An obvious effort to seek Christian forgiveness. It was booze making him say things he didn't actually believe. Me, I beg to differ: the booze only enabled him to say what was always there, the beliefs he was taught.

Off the Times:

Bush Sees a Chance for Change to Sweep Mideast

Must belabor the obvious: Has this administration not done enough harm yet, particularly in the Middle East? Is the world not a more dangerous place thanks to our leaders? (Last is a rhetorical question but the answer is yes, undoubtedly, irrefutably yes.)

Actually, thought they're all supposed to singles looking for axxxion. Anyway, a great rack on an enabler of the destruction of America still adds up to something ugly in my book....

Nothing too new, just nicely put. Krugman busts out of the TimeSelect barrier:

Amid everything else that’s going wrong in the world, here’s one more piece of depressing news: a few days ago the Harris Poll reported that 50 percent of Americans now believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when we invaded, up from 36 percent in February 2005. Meanwhile, 64 percent still believe that Saddam had strong links with Al Qaeda.

At one level, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. The people now running America never accept inconvenient truths. Long after facts they don’t like have been established, whether it’s the absence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons in the Whitewater affair or the absence of W.M.D. in Iraq, the propaganda machine that supports the current administration is still at work, seeking to flush those facts down the memory hole.

But it’s dismaying to realize that the machine remains so effective.

Here’s how the process works.

First, if the facts fail to support the administration position on an issue — stem cells, global warming, tax cuts, income inequality, Iraq — officials refuse to acknowledge the facts.

Sometimes the officials simply lie. “The tax cuts have made the tax code more progressive and reduced income inequality,” Edward Lazear, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, declared a couple of months ago. More often, however, they bob and weave.

Consider, for example, Condoleezza Rice’s response a few months ago, when pressed to explain why the administration always links the Iraq war to 9/11. She admitted that Saddam, “as far as we know, did not order Sept. 11, may not have even known of Sept. 11.” (Notice how her statement, while literally true, nonetheless seems to imply both that it’s still possible that Saddam ordered 9/11, and that he probably did know about it.) “But,” she went on, “that’s a very narrow definition of what caused Sept. 11.”

Meanwhile, apparatchiks in the media spread disinformation. It’s hard to imagine what the world looks like to the large number of Americans who get their news by watching Fox and listening to Rush Limbaugh, but I get a pretty good sense from my mailbag.

Many of my correspondents are living in a world in which the economy is better than it ever was under Bill Clinton, newly released documents show that Saddam really was in cahoots with Osama, and the discovery of some decayed 1980’s-vintage chemical munitions vindicates everything the administration said about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. (Hyping of the munitions find may partly explain why public belief that Saddam had W.M.D. has made a comeback.)

Some of my correspondents have even picked up on claims, mostly disseminated on right-wing blogs, that the Bush administration actually did a heck of a job after Katrina.

And what about the perceptions of those who get their news from sources that aren’t de facto branches of the Republican National Committee?

The climate of media intimidation that prevailed for several years after 9/11, which made news organizations very cautious about reporting facts that put the administration in a bad light, has abated. But it’s not entirely gone. Just a few months ago major news organizations were under fierce attack from the right over their supposed failure to report the “good news” from Iraq — and my sense is that this attack did lead to a temporary softening of news coverage, until the extent of the carnage became undeniable. And the conventions of he-said-she-said reporting, under which lies and truth get equal billing, continue to work in the administration’s favor.

Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Bush administration continues to be remarkably successful at rewriting history. For example, Mr. Bush has repeatedly suggested that the United States had to invade Iraq because Saddam wouldn’t let U.N. inspectors in. His most recent statement to that effect was only a few weeks ago. And he gets away with it. If there have been reports by major news organizations pointing out that that’s not at all what happened, I’ve missed them.

It’s all very Orwellian, of course. But when Orwell wrote of “a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past,” he was thinking of totalitarian states. Who would have imagined that history would prove so easy to rewrite in a democratic nation with a free press?

Just a quicky: I am so sick of how the majority of Amuricans disagree with our leaders, on moral stuff in this case.

Really, let them get off hir asses and vote the c*cks^ckers out or let them shut up. Voting is the very least they can do, not whining like little tit babies....

Here. Now! Just do it.

Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota

Marshals Say They Must File One Surveillance Detection Report, Or SDR, Per Month

The whole beautiful story is here.

We have succeeded in Iraq, mission is indeed accomplished, and the fruits of our victory are spreading:

Shiite militias are sending men to Lebanon.

Obviously to support democracy and peace in that country.

Bravo, our beloved leaders!!

Did you know that our leaders are perverting the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. It is now set up and operating to weaken civil rights. All you need to know is here.