Quick post: Apparently the presidential candidate who’s major platform is that he’s the experienced and knowledgeable foreign policy guy and Obama’s the young and inexperienced guy, doesn’t know what hemisphere Spain is in or at least who the Prime Minister of it is.

• Bizarre McCain Remarks Appear To Reject Spain As Ally

The Spanish journalist asks him three times if he’d meet with the Prime Minister of Spain, and each time McCain gives some canned statement about relations with Latin America and meeting with allies and “standing up” to those who aren’t. Three times the journalist gave him the opportunity to say “sure, I’d meet with our NATO ally whom we are friendly with” and each time McCain gave a rote memorized response about being tough on those who aren’t our friends…and how we’re friendly with Mexico.

When you read the transcript of the exchange it’s really like McCain’s brain is going:

• !Question received. Analyzing….
• Something about Spanish-something or other and meeting people.
• Keyword search: Spanish, meet people
• Response(s) found: Running archived file: “Meet with Latin American Friends–Hate Enemies”
• !Question received. Analyzing…
• Same question–something about Spanish and leaders
• Running archived file: “Drug War Going Well–Hate Enemies”

etc. This is the guy who early in the Iraq war wanted to shoot looters in the cities, and even the White House, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield White House, had to tell McCain “Uhm, no?” This is The Foreign Policy Guy?? Not to mention this stupid stance on meeting with friends and “standing up” to enemies. You want to meet with just leaders friendly to you? Ooh, congrats on your bravery and statesmanship! Isn’t it possible, just maybe, that if you were to meet with the leader of a country we’re not exactly friendly with, you have some kind of chance of improving relations? Isn’t that part of the job of the representative “leader” of a democratic country, to negotiate and create diplomacy with leaders unfriendly to the U.S.?

Oh wait, all the neo-cons and the war-mongers who have kissed the neo-con ring can think to do with any conflict is “shoot the bastards!”

And yet, while Obama may have taken back a slim lead, the polls still show a nearly dead heat with McCain in good shape to have an electorial win. What the hell is wrong with this country?!

…since Palin was basically whoring out her town to Washington lobbyists for tens of millions in earmarks. (No offense or disparagement meant to “working girls” by comparing them to sleazy politicians. I’d much rather have a beer with a prostitute than either Palin or McCain. Just a beer, though! Seriously.)

What am I talking about? It seems GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin spent $50K in redecorating her Mayoral office in Wasilla (despite running and winning on the platform that she’d cut spending and budget waste). To what effect?

According to [former Palin mentor] Carney, Palin’s office makeover included flocked, red wallpaper. “It looked like a bordello.”

• Sarah Palin’s Wasteful Ways

He also had this to say:

“I thought it was an outrageous expense, especially for someone who had run as a budget cutter,” said Carney. “It was also illegal, because Sarah had not received the council’s approval.”

What was her response to criticism that she was doing things without proper legal approval?

“I braced her about it,” he said. “I told her it was against the law to make such a large expenditure without the council taking a vote. She said, ‘I’m the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can’t.’”

“I’ll never forget it — it’s one of the few times in my life I’ve been speechless,” Carney added. “It would have been easier for her to finesse it. She had the votes on the council by then, she controlled it. But she just pushed forward. That’s Sarah. She just has no respect for rules and regulations.”

Complete and utter disregard for the rule of law and a belief that the “executive” is above the law and has the right to do whatever they want until someone stops them…who does that remind you of? Anyone?

While I was making a point that she’s a good Bush clone, she’s actually a lot more like The Penguin, er, Dick Cheney:

“Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy.”

“(I)nterviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.”

• Dr. Rovenstein’s Monster….

Despite her stated desire to fight “the Old Boy’s Network in Washington,” she’s part of the problem herself by removing qualified people in office and replacing them with friends who know nothing about the job they’re running (although that still sounds like someone else…)

“(W)hen there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.”

…

“The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. “

But back to acting like a lil Cheney, it seems secrecy and avoiding pesky laws and accountability is her bailiwick:

• Just Like Bush White House, Palin Uses Personal E-mail Accounts And Claims Executive Privilege

The lawyer filing the request pointed out that the point of government e-mail is to ensure “security and encryption.” “She’s running state business out of Yahoo?” he asked. Mother Jones reports that Palin’s refusal to hand over e-mails stands in violation of the Alaska Public Records Act.

If McCain/Palin win, it’ll be just like old times.

UPDATE:

• Palin’s Yahoo email account hacked, contents posted to Wikileaks

If only she’d just listened in time to that lawyer in the quote above. How ironic she used personal email accounts to hide her activities, only to have her activities “hacked” because she wasn’t using secured government accounts.

Maybe I’m over simplifying things, but I find this very interesting:

Nearly 150 years ago our country suffers through a horrific war that drastically alters the economy of the country from top to bottom. But once the war ends, the country starts to go through a period of invention and development, exploration and prosperity. New industries rise up and the industrial age booms.

At first the general populace, by and large, enjoy the benefits of the growing economy and increased jobs despite the massive shift from rural to urban manufacturing economy. But then corporations and conglomerates grow and merge and fight and corporate owners become richer and more powerful as the natural flow of wealth in corporate capitalism goes upward toward the top of the pyramids. The rich and powerful capitalists begin to literally buy laws from local, state, and even federal government which continue to favor the power of the corporation and protect the wealth of the owners while taking advantage of labor.

Thus began a Gilded Age in which the rich got richer and everyone else got poorer. Government was in the pocket of business and corporations and in entire concept of “free market” was undermined by the fact the government was simply a tool of the robber barons to get what they want at the expense of the worker–which was most of the country.

Then the economy collapses. Banks fail. Houses and small businesses are foreclosed on. Unemployment skyrockets. We imagine this as a time in which everyone, including the wealthy, suffer–but this is not true. The only people who lost their “fortunes” were that period’s middle and upper-middle class. They became poor while the poor became destitute. The rich and wealthy: the Rockefeller’s, the Morgan’s, The Bush’s, the Gates’, the DuPont’s–the capitalists of the country–remained largely unaffected.

To help return the government back to promoting life, liberty, and the pusuit of happiness for all citizens, and not just the corporate owners, radical and progressive politicians are voted in by a citizenry disgusted by the corporate lackey and conservative public disinterest administrations of Coolidge and Hoover. These progressives start passing laws to regulate the markets, banking, loans and lending, housing, and creates social programs like Social Security and work aid programs, welfare programs, and supported union interests.

And guess what? People are back to work, the economy begins it very slow but palpable crawl back to recovery, and less people are sleeping in the streets and waiting in lines for basic foodstuffs. By the time we start making some equipment to help the British fight Germany, the United States is on its way out of the Depression and most Americans are at least earning living wages again.

The conservatives and capitalists have twisted the facts and promoted the message so that when we think of the end of the Depression we think nothing of the massive shift in policy from pro-corporate interests to pro-worker/people interests and simply credit war with economic recovery and the return of the middle class. While it’s true that the creation of the military industrial complex accelerated the rise of wealth (along with the imperialism) of America, the improvement was already begun before the war and the sustained power of the middle class through the 40s, 50s, and 60s was due to government policy which kept corporate greed and power brokerage in check.

And then Reagan and the proto-neo-cons happened. With his mantra of “small government” he eliminated and reduced some of the most significant regulations on corporate interests. Some of the immediate results include the Savings and Loan and junk bond scandals. He helped accelerate the growth of global market capitalism and the disempowerment of the workers by crafting policy which encouraged corporations to move labor and manufacturing to other countries in lower labor costs and raise profits at the expense of American employment stability, earnings, benefits, and bargaining power. Reagan was responsible for one of the greatest shifts in power from the worker to the CEO since Hoover.

And in the years since, further corporate deregulation and dismantling of social programs has created another Gilded Age in which the top 1% have gotten obscenely richer and the bottom 99% have gotten increasingly poorer as well as more politically disenfranchised and powerless. And what is happening today? Foreclosers on a scale not seen since the Depression. Massive national banks and lenders going under. The stock market plummeting on the bad days, shaky and unstable on the good. The middle class becoming poorer and poorer while the rich corporate owners enjoy bail outs and tax breaks and other help from a corporate owned and controled government. (”Free market” my ash!)

So, how far down will this eerie replay of history play out? How bad is it going to get before progressive politicians return government to the role it’s supposed to play to favor the rights and power of the people and not corporate interests? (If that’s even possible any more, and most Democrats and 3rd Party politicians aren’t even close to free of corporate butt-kissing.)

Here’s something of note, that may indicate how things could go the next four years: McCain recently picked William E. Timmons to head his transition team should he win. Who is Timmons? A former Reagan adviser who has made his considerable wealth by being a Washington lobbyist working for, among other corporations, oil companies.

“This word ‘Maverick’ you keep saying–I do not think it means what you think it means.” I think I heard that in a movie once.

(Top image (source unknown) : Photos of former employees of banking giant Lehman Brothers packing up and leaving after it filed for bankruptcy on Sunday. Side note: other banking giant, Merrill Lynch & Co., to be sold.)

Hat tip to Ellen Datlow for this.

One of the stories mentioned in yesterday’s blog post on the police unlawfully raiding peaceful protestor organizations, homes of liberal organizers not even planning to protest, and confiscating computers and cameras (the dangerous weapons of the press and free public who watch the watchers), was the arrest of Democracy Now! producers and reporter:

• Update: Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar Released After Illegal Arrest at RNC

Some bits of information that I didn’t see included in that article but has been detailed by Amy Goodman and witnesses elsewhere: the so-called riot (peaceful protest) was quelled and Sharif and Nicole were already accosted, battered, and cuffed, by the time Amy Goodman (who was interviewing Alaskan delegates inside the convention) got word that her producers were arrested. She rushed to the location to find out what was going on, and when (with security pass and press credentials clearly displayed) she explained she was press and demanded that her producers (who also clearly had convention press credentials displayed) be released–she too was accosted and cuffed and arrested.

At some point Secret Service agents came around and confiscated the security credentials of the held press employees.

At the Republican convention in New York in 2004 the police arrested over 1800 people and subsequently dropped the charges on most of them. The word ’bout town is that they willingly sucked up the millions of dollars in wrongful arrest suits they ended up paying in order to silence and intimidate would-be protestors and evil trouble-makers. Word ’bout Minneapolis/St. Paul is that they too are willing to suck it up in order to establish police state control over democracy. (Although there are reports of grumblings among the police who take umbrage at the fact that, like in New York four years ago, they’re being directed in these raids and sweeping arrests of press by federal agents–the presence of which can be clearly seen in many photos and videos being taken of raids and arrests.)

One of the organizations in pre-conventions raid mentioned in yesterday’s blog, was I-Witness. I didn’t know it yesterday that they were responsible for many of the dropped charges in New York four years ago because their reporter’s video clearly showed New York evidence against “conspirators” and “rioters” having been doctored and edited!

I ranted too much on it yesterday, so I’ll be brief when I reiterate here that we’ve lost control of our government. We were never meant to be controlled by the government which was intended to BE us, we the people. The government was not supposed to watch us, corral us, intimidate us. It was always supposed to be the other way around as the government was government only by the will and consent of the governed.

“When the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear their government, there is tyranny.”

Thomas Jefferson

Democracy has lost, the American experiment has failed. Is there any hope of the people regaining control?

There’s been something of a noticeable difference between how the police have been handling the two political party conventions.

At last week’s Democratic convention there was a little trouble noted at the site among protesters. Seems some got a little too physical and were summarily subdued and cordoned off by a questionably large force of cops in urban riot gear. (See photo left.)

We have the right to peaceably assemble and protest, and people were allowed to at the DNC–within a certain amount of guarded control. And when people go from peaceful to rushing riot cops, you pretty much deserve a baton to the side of the head (once, though–not a total beat down).

But then comes the Republican national convention, and something different takes place: various protest groups which are being watched and in some cases infiltrated, over the last week have been raided in warrantless police break-ins and seizures of property in what is being described a “preemptive strikes” against groups they believe are planning to incite riot. We’re not talking about the overtly criminal behavior of a small group of vandals who have indeed been breaking the law by committing damage to private and public property, but rather liberal activist groups and even liberal press in a blatant attempt to stifle protest.

One of these dangerous and vile commies that were accosted and had property siezed was a sustainable living education group’s traveling bus:

At approximately 6:25 pm on August 30, 2008 Minneapolis Police, Minnesota State Troopers, Ramsey County Sheriffs, Saint Paul Police, and University of Minnesota Police pulled over the Earth Activist Training Permaculture Demonstration Bus (Permibus) by exit 237 on Interstate 94. Initially the police told the people on the bus to exit. When the people on the bus asked if they were being detained they were told that they were but police wereunable to provide justification. When asked why they pulled the bus over they refused to answer. After repeated requests to explain why the bus had been stopped Officer Honican of the Minneapolis Police explained that this was just a routine traffic stop though he did not explain the reason for the traffic stop. The police then told Stan Wilson, the driver and registered owner of the Permibus, that they were going to impound the bus in case they wanted to execute a search warrant later. After more than an hour of being questioned by Stan and Delyla Wilson as to the legalities of their detainment and the impoundment of the Permibus, the police then informed Stan that the bus, which is legally registered as a passenger vehicle in the state of Montana, was being impounded for a commercial vehicle inspection. Shortly afterward Sergeant Paul Davis, a commercial vehicle inspector arrived on scene. Despite the polices insistence that the reason for impoundment was for a commercial vehicle inspection the Permibus crew were not allowed to remove anything from the bus including computers, toiletries, and 17-year-old Megan Wilson’s shoes. The police finally allowed the animals to be removed from the Permibus before it was towed, leaving the Permibus family standing beside their chickens and dogs, homeless on the highway. . . .

After the incident Stan Wilson said, “If the combined law enforcement of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Ramsey County, and the State of Minnesota can pull over and impound a vehicle and home used to teach organic gardening and sustainability, one has to wonder what it is our government really fears. After all, we seek to teach people that the real meaning of homeland security is local food, fuel and energy production. For that we have had our lives stolen by government men with guns.”

Damn hippies! I bet they were just waiting for the moment to undermine American values! Another warrantless raid was on a duplex housing journalists from the site LegalWatch, who routinely report on the violations on civil liberties the government commits:

“About an hour and a half ago 20 to 30 heavily armed police officers surrounded the house,” Whelan said. “One of my roommates said ‘I want to see a warrant’ and she was immediately detained.”

Another group, I-Witness (which fights for protester rights and was able to get charges against 2004 RNC protestors dropped), was raided and people were handcuffed and searched before being let go in a clear show of police intimidation.

These are just a few of the confirmed stories of preemptive strikes against protestors before the GOP convention. And apparently it’s an ongoing issue as recent reports of journalists (who at one time were given wide berths by the police so long as they weren’t in or causing imminent threat of harm) being harassed and apprehended by police for no other reason than being around protestors: Radio news host among protesters arrested at RNC for “conspiracy to riot”, National Guard headed in?

Amy Goodman, host of the independent news program “Democracy Now!,” was among hundreds who were arrested in St. Paul Minnesota today. Also detained were Goodman’s producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. The three were covering the protests at the Republican National Convention, but the Minneapolis Police Department charged them with conspiracy to riot.

No one in the mainstream corporate media is covering any of this–the closest large media outlet is Salon magazine:

• Federal government involved in raids on protesters

Today’s Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically “aided by informants planted in protest groups.” Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force — an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI — was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate “vegan groups” and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday.

Why is there no outcry? Greewald suggests:

[T]here is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve what they get, even if nothing they’ve done is remotely illegal. We love to proclaim how much we cherish our “freedoms” in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic — but we’ve decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it’s therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.

You know, just stop reading my blog post and just read his article. He deals with this issue coherently and completely, discussing the ramifications of federal involvement in silencing dissent from the people and what it means to live in a society where people just sit down, shut up, and do what they’re told. But then, that’s why Glenn is a paid journalist and I’m just a blogger.

But I’ll babble a bit more for you masochists. The fundamental problem is the people have allowed themselves to become subjects of rulership. It was written somewhere, I don’t recall where, maybe some Post-It note or something, that government–particularly the United States’ government–was to be by the people and for the people. That basically, WE THE PEOPLE ARE the government. The people we send to Washington are not our rulers! They are not our “leaders“! They are representatives of us, the many. We have allowed the government to control us like any medieval kingdom or tinpot dictatorship or soviet fascism. We sit idly by while right after right, freedom after freedom, is taken away from us in the name of our security and safety.

We’ve done this to ourselves through our complacency and credulity. We’ve turned into a nation in which people are harrased and accosted for not participating in the tribal groupthink of “God Bless America” at a ball game. In which dissent and speaking out against the actions of the government that is supposed to be by you and for you, is considered unpatriotic and you’re given the option to “love it or leave it” if your opinions differ from the jingoist status quo–when the very act of dissent and questioning the government was considered by Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Paine, to be ideals of patriotism and an informed, involved citizenry! We can blame the politicians who act like rulers, like we’re their subjects, but it’s ultimately 100, 150 years social, political, civic layziness on the part of the People who are to blame.

In politics, we as a nation do what we’re told by those we anoint as more capable than us to take care of us; in religion, we as a nation do what we’re told by those we assume have direct lines to the god we believe will take care of us; in our daily lives, we as a nation have faith in the corporations and their marketing corporations to have our best interests at heart and will take care of our needs and wants; as parents, we as a nation shuffle responsibility for raising our kids unto the schools and television. We are a nation of unthinking, unreasoning, uncritical, non-thinkers who thrive on rumor and urban legend, on sensationalism and scandalous entertainment, abdicating personal responsibility for any and everything that we think will take care of us.

Goodness knows I don’t want anything terrible to happen to America, to people. The world can use a whole lot less suffering in it–but I’m afraid we’re the sleepy frog in the pot that’s about to boil us to death. I’m afraid it’s only going to be something horrible and massive to shock us out of complacency and make us realize for our own sake we HAVE to get back to a government that IS us! It’s not an issue of big government or small government, lots of taxes or no taxes, welfare or privatization–those are abstractions in the face of the fact that we no longer have a representational democracy. We no longer have a system of government by and for the people. We have a government by the capitalists and for the corporations. And we’re going to continue to complacently play Playstations and write blogs and attend feel-good churches of prosperity and be told how we can “live better, pay less” for the same products in different packaging, and we’ll continue to complain and gripe and moan about this or that. Meanwhile the state continues its unstoppable march toward complete control and power over the individual. Forcing us to be good, unquestioning, submissive consumers who don’t make waves or question that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

What sucks is I like my Playstation and blog writing….

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is almost as big a tool as Glenn Beck–although it takes a lot to be as big of a tool as Beck.

Ruben posted a commentary on CNN.com: Commentary: Obama’s confusing blend of left-right economics in which he whines about not understanding Obama’s message that just as each of us need to work to help ourselves, we have the responsibility as fellow humans in a society to help each other as well. Ruben can’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea that the idea that “everyone can lift themselves up by the bootstraps” is bullcrap. Oh sure, people can and have risen from nothing to riches on their own–but it’s usually at the expense of and by stepping on the backs of other people. That kind of “bootstrap” selfishness is fine if you live out in the wild west frontier, but doesn’t work in our web of social interaction in which the welfare of my neighbors affect my own and vise versa.

Ruben has the idiotic blindness to throw a token complain at Bush and then later spew this ridiculousness:

I can’t remember the last time I saw government do something right. … Case in point: On this third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, there are people in New Orleans who are still waiting for the federal government to rebuild that city…

He’s completely fallen for the Republican con job! Break the government and then get people to vote for you by complaining about broken government! That’s chutzpah! The Bush administration and the neo-cons have systematically broken the U.S. government by privatizing everything not nailed down and putting loyalist lackeys completely incompetent for their jobs in charge of the hen houses. Then when things like Katrina happens and the people they put in charge of programs they broke fail to do any good or even make things worse, they turn around and say “See how broken government is?! Vote for us, the small government party!” God! It’s obvious! It astounds me when people can’t see it.

Then Ruben has the bold faced audacity to claim:

The same goes for the Democrats who convened in Denver. This is a party that maintains power by trying to convince people that our country is a dark place, devoid of opportunities, and that the answer is to elect more of them.

Now they’re seeking a change in the White House, a change in policy, and a change in national priorities –even if they aren’t ready to change their tune.

OK, that’s just utter B.S. Period. Anyone who actually listens to Obama, Biden, Wexler, Kennedy, even Clinton, anyone who has been speaking for the last week in favor of Obama has speaking almost entirely of our promise as a nation. Of the fight and vigor of the American people. Of the, get this… CHANGE (sound familiar?) that is needed to get this broken government that is breaking the people back on track to prosperity and hope!

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is an effin’ tool.

The “invisible hand” to which I refer is the famous metaphor for the free market economy. The supposed magic hand that makes everything cheaper and more efficient. Feh! But more on that general topic later. Right now, here is some excellent information on how the free market health care system is f—d up.

Here’s an article by Harvard cell biology post-grad Alex Palazzo in which he uses various sources of information, including the New England Journal of Medicine, to illustrate how in our lovely free market system, health care (and education) costs continue to rise over and beyond most other costs of living:

• Let’s talk about facts this election – Part III – Health Insurance

“Results: In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada’s national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada’s private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers’ administrative costs were far lower in Canada.”

Meanwhile, John Goodman, close friend to John McCain and a policy advisor, and likely someone who will have influence in a McCain administration, recently stated that no one in America is uninsured because everyone has access to an emergency room. (McCain adviser: Everyone in U.S. has some health coverage)

Yes, of course! Because that’s exactly what parents of infants with a worrying cough do, they go to the emergency room! Need a child wellness visit or a preventative care treatment, that’s what emergency rooms are for! Gynecological and prostate exams? Emergency room! I bet they diagnose and treat cancer and immuno-diseases in emergency rooms! Hey, my wife’s chronic illness doesn’t have to bankrupt us from medical bills–we just have to go to the emergency room!

And the GOP condemns liberals for being “elitists.”

The proof of the GOP’s hatred for the middle class is all around. Having ready access to health care and quality public education are the two things which can make for a strong democracy! If the people of a nation can be healthy and not driven into poverty by health care, and have access to education, the people can be powerful and vital and strong. But that’s not what the GOP wants. They are the party of the capitalists and they want oligarchy. They want the richest 1 to 5% to run the country and everyone else to be subject to their rule as nothing more than mass consumers. What did Bush say after 9/11? Go out and buy stuff. What’s his solution for a recession? Give us money so you can buy stuff. Meanwhile they’re systematically undermining the education system by underfunding it and disincentive-ing (let’s say that’s a word for now) good teachers and promoting private and paid charter schools, and their official health care plan is to encourage insurance companies to raise rates and let the poor see a doctor only when it’s life threatening. For the seventh straight year capital gains is up while the average wage has gone down and the number in poverty is up. (Meaning: corporations are making more profit while the workers are seeing less money.)

Of course I say that’s the GOP plan, and it is, but they’re the biggest villains because they’re unabashedly the party of protecting the rich. The Democrats have a larger number of progressives and people who want to empower the poor and middle class (two classes coming increasingly closer), though they’re not off the hook. For example, Senator Clinton’s grand “universal” health care plan is to force everyone to buy health insurance like we do car insurance. Hey, increase the profits of the private health insurance companies, put a greater strain on the family budget, and make it a mandatory burden on the people… that’s about as evil a plan as any Republican could come up with! While the Dems have more people in political office who have come up from poor and modest families and didn’t inherit money, they’re all products of capitalist ideology and will always be tools of the hegemony regardless of where their hearts lie in helping or hindering the other 95% of the population. The only consolation is that more Dems do have their hearts in the right place and at least that’s something.

A recent interview with author and technology writer Cory Doctorow really exemplifies the necessity for real universal health care in a democracy. (Interview with Free Talk Live) I think Cory Doctorow can be branded as anything but a fascist socialist! He’s on the front lines of fighting for civil liberties and against the encroaching police state in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and…the world if possible. But he made a comment on that libertarian radio show that resonated with me like a puzzle piece falling into place or the last square sticker on a Rubik’s Cube being put on the proper side: he said (and I’m paraphrasing) that socialized health care is as vital a component of society’s infrastructure as roads or the sewer system. It was a reasonable and realistic comment that I, and I think so many other people in the U.S., subliminally understand but have not been able to put into words.

Libertarians and objectivists live in a world 100 years gone–a world where people could live and thrive making minimal contact with other people and where health care was basically eating right and seeing a doctor if you have TB. We don’t live in that world. We live in a society in which people live virtually right on top of each other. We have no choice but to interact with masses of people every day and the people they dealt with on and on. Your ability to have access to good health care and the freedom to use it without fear of bankruptcy affects me directly in many ways beyond just contagious illnesses. My child’s ability to get good, consistent education from her teacher depends on her teacher’s access to health care. My job at work depends on my coworkers being healthy and in good shape. By boss depends on that from his workers. Our daily lives are so intertwined with each other, our productivity, education, entertainment, lifestyle, security, depends on each of us being healthy and not preoccupied with going broke because of ridiculously high medical bills.

Doctorow stated on the radio interview that as a writer he’d never want to live anywhere that didn’t have socialized health care. He told a couple of stories of how he and his infant daughter got wonderful medical and dental care from socialized facilities, completely counter to the horror stories the conservatives and libertarians dredge up. (And I concur. My brother, who moved to Montreal, and his mother-in-law, have experienced fantastic Canadian health care “free” of charge, and their taxes aren’t much higher than ours–negligible difference in fact. Meanwhile, I’m paying ridiculous amounts in insurance deductibles and out of pocket in addition to the taxes I pay to fund an illegal and immoral war, and I still have to wait to see a specialist. For example, I had a repetitive stress injury in a hand that could seriously affect my work performance, and in addition to my insurance I still had to pay nearly a grand for an MRI that I also had to wait three painful and reduced productivity weeks for.)

And his comment that he could be a writer and not worry about his and his family’s health while living in Canada or the U.K. has kind of pissed me off (not at him). We in the U.S. are increasingly working for insurance (and our gas). We’re forced to whither away our pathetically short lives as worker drones unable to follow dreams of life and pursuit of happiness–unless it’s to be a worker drone for literally most of our lives. I can’t be the writer I want to be because I have to work for insurance. Because, unlike a lot of successful writers, I’m not brilliant, writing any kind of quality fiction or non-fiction takes a lot of fresh and wakeful brainpower on my part (blogging doesn’t count–it’s an utterly mindless and quick expulsion of words for me, as anyone reading this can attest to). If I want to be successful, I have to write as a full-time job. As it is, I can’t do that because I have to work 40+ hours a day at a mind and energy sapping job so I can have a chance at keeping us from going bankrupt from medical expenses. Otherwise I could easily have a mindless part-time job for other bills and be able to put all the time and energy I want into writing good stuff. I have no chance of doing that under free market private health care. And it makes me so angry!

Well, enough mindless ranting for now.

This is a very, very scary time we live in right now. Jack Cafferty has a fantastic although disheartening commentary on CNN.com right now:

• Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush?

He talks about how McCain was at the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy (likely got into the Navy through his Admiril dad), has no intellectual curiosity, is only capable of speaking in canned responses, is good with a quip or a jibe but can’t think on his feet…he’s very much a Bush pt. 2:

George Bush’s record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.

He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens’ faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.

I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

The fact that we may get John McCain as President is scary enough. But what magnifies the fear a hundred-fold is comments from “ordinary people” like this one from a “Jimmy P”:

I certianly hope so! Because whether you liberal pansys like it or not, it’s this administration’s policies that have kept the homeland from being hit again. Don’t think for a minute that these lunatics, that fools like Obama would attempt to negotiate with, wouldn’t hit us here at home if possible. We are not entitled to unlimited civil liberties – check my phone, pc, bank account, who cares! Fascism is the best form of government! The majority of people are unable to run their own lives in a responsible manner. To he** with Democracy, it’s a failed experiment!

Is that an ironic, joke comment? Based on similar sentiments I’ve seen elsewhere, I doubt it. While so far that’s the most fanatic response on the CNN.com post. half the comments are from people who are supporting McCain for his rhetoric against terrorism and bashing Obama for his desire for diplomacy. (Yeah, because Nixon didn’t think to use diplomacy dealing with the Chinese who were fueling the Viet Nam war from that side ot it. He blew them off the face of the Earth, right?)

Many people hate to foster the supposedly illusionary division in this country they think is a manufacturing of the media and their color-coded states; but regardless of “red” or “blue” state coloring, there IS two Americas: one that believes the President should be a smart, educated, versatile, adaptable, statesman; and another that believes the President should be a butt-kickin’ regular joe who takes no guff and will show the rest of the world who’s boss. The former believes there’s a balance between security and civil liberties and cares about how the country is run and how healthy it and its citizens are, the other seems to not care less about other people so long as they can say they’re winning a foreign war.

I see this division every day at work, I read about it all over the blogonets, I hear it all over the radio. It’s a very real and deep division, and I really have no idea how it can possibly be bridged without A. the U.S. collapsing under the watch of neo-cons (which I don’t want to happen!), or B. we once again become a strong, stable country with a powerful middle-class and no bloody foreign entanglements. No, even then, the people on the far right would never admit they might be wrong and will continue to criticize and complain about socialism and we’re not doing enough to kill our enemies.

How will this possibly end?

An interview recently released (but recorded a year ago) with writer and technoculture critic Cory Doctorow, on Reality Break podcast, has what I think is a brilliant observation about the subjectivity of contemporary issues and the concept of “the Singularity” specifically:

Science fiction is about reflecting the present not the future, so, all science fiction writers predect the present and that means they write in the style and the form of the day. And you know I think the “Singularity” right now reflects a sort of social anxiety about technical people who are slipping. You know, it’s kind of like an après moi le déluge. You know, “once Vernor Vinge can’t keep up with technological progress, technical progress will no longer be keep-upable with.” And I think there’s something to that, I think there’s this feeling that when you transition from being a bright young turk to grumpy old fart that what’s changed is the world and not you, and that the world has changed in a way that is truly wrong. My friend Jim Griffon says that “If it’s been invented before you were eighteen then you assume it’s always been there, if it’s invented before you’re thirty you assume it’s the best thing ever made, if it’s invented after you’re thirty you assume that it should be illegal.”

(He also has some great discussion on why social networking software is so addictive and how absurd end user license agreements (EULAs) are by forcing us to assume a contract by our behavior–for example, those rediculous stickers on software CD envelopes (or the notices sometimes inside the envelope) that state “by opening this envelope you agree to….”)

Anyway, I find this comment about the nostalgia for the past and the fear of the future intriguing since I’ve been spending a lot of time the last year researching the “death of science fiction” (or rather, its absorption into all genre) and having spent many brain cycles on this concept of the Singularity. It’s an idea put forward by author and scientist Vinge that posthuman technology is advancing in such a way that when humans today would be incapable to perceiving or understanding the “human” of the future, humanity will have passed through the Singularity and modern human history will be at an end. This event could be when artificial intelligence has overtaken homo-sapien and we have been relegated to a “lesser” species, or when homo-sapiens have fundamentally changed via genetic manipulation and cyber enhancement.

It’s an idea that’s gaining a lot of ground both in sf and in technoculture–but one has to wonder, does putting such a connotatively fatal demarcation seperating the two not imply fear of the advancement?

I really need to keep writing this weekend (OMG! I just touchtyped that last sentence! And most of this sentence! This is a big deal for me. I’ve been using a keyboard, sometimes 10+ hours a day, for 25 years, and I still can’t touchtype. Anywa….) so this should be reasonably brief.

A couple of communities have taken very different approaches to the threat of crime in their community. (Before I get started, I’m comparing apples to crabapples here as the threat of crime are two different types for the communities. Regardless, I think the differences in approaches are far reaching and grander than the specifics of what they’re trying to protect themselves against.)

A town in Arkansas, plagued by a criminal culture of drugs and shootings, has allowed its law enforcement to place the town under martial law:

• Crime-ridden Arkansas town expands 24-hour curfew

“Curfew” is a rather quaint term for what’s going on there. The police, with automatic assault rifles, are stopping anyone from being on the streets after curfew. Their attitude it clear:

“As far as I’m concerned, at 3 o’clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law,” Councilman Eugene “Red” Johnson said. “Anyone out at 3 o’clock shouldn’t be out on the street, unless you’re going to the hospital.”

It seems to be the opinion of the town’s “leaders” that free citizens don’t have the liberty to be out on their own business in their town when they wish. His belief that everyone should be resting snug in their beds at night else you’re a ne’er-do-well is being imposed by force upon free citizens.

Of course, as all things are, the issue is complicated. There’s no doubt that their town is overrun by crime. Randoms shootings, drive-bys, drugs rampant. In a very significant way I feel for this town. There’s a part of me that thinks in order to deal with an out of control crime wave, the fascist fist of martial law is needed to stem the tide so that more democratic means can be allowed to have an effect. Martial law is an addressing of a symptom–crime come from failures in the social structure and no amount of fascist strength will solve the problems of social distress.

I don’t completely disagree with a limited and controled use of strength to get a situation under control, but that’s not what appears to be happening in this town (I’ve never even visited and know nothing about aside from news articles). It would seem the law of the land has an attitude that armed enforcement of curfew is not a limited and should not be a limited solution but rather a norm. When you have community leaders making statements that no one should be out on the streets late at night, you have a truly fascist attitude which seeks to control the populace and not help it to live with liberty and freedom. This town may push the criminal element to other neighboring towns, but they will not solve the underlying issues this way and will in fact end up do more harm to the very concepts of what it means to live in America.

In the curfew area, those inside the homes in the watch area peered out of door cracks Tuesday as police cruisers passed. They closed the doors afterward.

That sounds like an establishing shot from a movie set in East Germany or the Soviet Union, maybe a movie version of 1984.

Meanwhile, to protect their school children from what they see as a rising tide of school shootings, a Texas school district will be allowing its teacher to carry concealed handguns:

• Texas district will let teachers carry guns

“Gun free zones” are basically game preserves for anyone who has enough disdain for law as to want to shoot people and are going to ignore “gun free zone” declarations in order to do it. A look at school shootings the last couple of decades and you see pretty much two scenarios playing out: 1. A shooter enters a school and starts killing and wounding unprotected people until they decide when to stop, and then they kill themselves. Police arrive after it’s all done. 2. Someone (a student and/or teacher) runs to their car, grabs their gun, and comes back to stop the shooter thus ending the spree earlier than the shooter would have decided to. Police arrive after it’s all done. (Same goes with the recent church shootings.)

Unless a school is placed next door to a police station, it can take several minutes for police to respond to a shooting (which even in this age of cell phones, may not even be placed until a couple of minutes into the event), and then it can take longer for the police to make an organized counter “attack” on the shooter. And as we’ve seen, it doesn’t take very long for a shooter to exhaust their ammo and turn a final shot on themselves.

The idea of a “liberal media” is absurd, except when it comes to issues of successful non-police use of guns to protect innocent people, then the media is generally silent on reporting it:

• When killers meet armed resistance
• A quick index to our articles on guns, gun control and gun free zones.

(Although, as you can see, CNN.com appears to be doing a fair piece on this Texas town–kudos to them)

The important thing is that the school district is being smart about it. When rabid liberals hear the idea of letting teachers or students carry firearms on a campus, they immediately commit reductio ad absurdum and imagine a wild west shootout left and right. The district will be requiring very specific and strict guidelines for who can carry:

For employees to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun, must be authorized to carry by the district, must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and must use ammunition designed to minimize the risk of ricocheting bullets.

(OK, so this isn’t brief.) These are indeed two different situations that have received two different solutions, but I would like to point out the mindset and the larger repercussions of both solutions. In the Arkansas town you have a situation where the empowerment of the people has be abdicated in favor of police control. The populace have turned over their ability to take matters in their own hand, to fight to make change in their community, over to an entirely different group of armed thugs. A more organized and better funded group of thugs, perhaps. The free citizens have given up their freedom and have chosen to live under siege. Safe, perhaps, but disempowered and cowering to a different force that’s become even more uncontrollable than the criminal element.

On the other hand, the Texas town is determined to take matters into their own hands and protect their own themselves. They have recognized the absurdity of both fascist control and posting warning signs that have all the effect of “Nuh uh, mister baddie-bad. You can’t bring your guns in here to express your sociopathic suicide rage–this is a ‘gun free zone!’” Instead of relying on the near-impossible protection of the police, they have chosen a course of action that empowers themselves and not only does not eliminate freedom but rather express and celebrates it.

It’s this exact difference in attitudes which can be extrapolated into the bigger context of our reaction to terrahism. Our government has decided to take the attitude of the Arkansas town and enact police state tactics. It has decided the best way to protect the land of the free against those who despise our freedom and liberty, is to remove freedom and liberty. To paraphrase Penn Jillette, the first act our government should have done after 9/11 was to remove laws, not make more restricting our freedoms. The best attack against fundamentalism is to increase freedom and liberty and not do their job for them.

And the tragic thing is that we the people are letting it happen. We’re peeking out the crack of our doors and closing them tight as the law drives by in the middle of the night. We imagine we’re nice and safe, but unlike the “safety” of the Arkansas town, our safety is completely illusionary. Time and time and time again it’s pointed up how worthless the TSA security is in anything except controlling the innocent. How worthless the border controls are at anything except controlling in innocent. How worthless port inspections are, shipping truck control is. We’re living under increasingly fascist state control without the benefit of the safety we’re supposedly being sold in exchange for our civil liberties.

This news item:

• Man whose US immigration notice was sent to the wrong address is detained with untreated spinal cancer until he dies, denied access to his wife and children

I have no comment of my own that could add to the story itself. I’ll just post what some others have said:

OM:

…You know, one day everyone’s going to finally get tired of hire-a-cops, and it’ll be *them* put up against the wall before the lawyers.

Bastards.

Victor Trac:

The terrorists win again. I bet they didn’t expect to be /this/ successful when planning 9/11.

FLUP:

Yet another reason never to go to the US: after they copy the contents of my laptop and phone, they post a letter to the wrong address, lock me up and watch me die.

K2R:

> he no longer received painkillers,
> because he could not stand in line to collect them.

This sounds like one of the pervert things my Grandparent’s generation did in Germany.

“Of course you can have painkillers, just line up there! You can’t walk anymore? Well, I’m afraid, you will have to pick up you medication yourself, it’s the law.”

This is exactly the inhumanity small people in Germany showed while hiding behind buerocracy.

I cannot imagine how desperate he was, being stuck in the bad dream of Kafka the US has become, always hoping to wake up.