Picture and Words, Not Mine

Stolen from Down With Tyranny from a post the rest of which I don't agree with, so I'm being petulant and only linkingto the site.

Another Day Another Atrocity

Here we are with another law enforcement atrocity designed to make us all safer. I do remember discussing the original SC case in law school that allowed the police to take a draw of blood without the consent of the person whose blood was being taken. My doesn't that sound clean though. No discussion about strapping down the victim and forcing him/her to lie there against their wishes while the cops stick a needle into their arm to get the blood.

How many times do you think that they are permitted to stick a needle into your arm until they hit a vein? I suspect as many as they want. Thank god we don't live in a police state.

Fucked Again

Well this is certainly helpful (for the wealthiest and for the insurance industry). I wasn't particularly hopeful about a public plan at any rate, but I suspect that this puts the kibosh on it.

I am old enough to remember when Johnson was pushing Medicare and Medicaid through and the screaming and wailing of the doctors and their representatives fighting against it. "Oh Noes, socialized medicine."

Now they suck on that tit like a month old baby. Well let's look at it from their point of view. "We get the medical care we need fuck you."

Your Tax Dollars At Work

So I'm told by one who should know (she, unfortunately has "inside" information) that the woman's prison in Marysville has just this week opened a new "dormitory."

Doesn't have hot water yet. I'm just thrilled with the expenditure of our tax dollars on this facility. One thing that makes the average legislator stand up a little taller and smile a little broader is the ability to throw more poor people and junkies into prison.

Congratulations Ohio

Change You Can Believe In

I do no think that word means what you think it means.

Already

So it's started already. Two days after the election and already unnamed sources are telling Obama that he will have to renege on his basic promise to get us out of Iraq.

They'll do this with everything. Unsourced stories telling us all that we must not do whatever it is that the beltway mob and the closet fascists who were in control until just now do not want us to do. It is their long war, it will be a constant battle for every advance.

This is just the same thing that happened with Clinton. They did everything they could to destroy his presidency. And let's face it Clinton was really moderately conservative. The best Republican president since Eisenhower.

You know, this eternal vigilance stuff is really hard.

I'M too Old For This Shit

Or another thought, is the crash and bail out part of a plan to cement the current ruling class in place and prevent any real mobility from class to class in our society.

Can I have some more of that tin foil please?

I'm a little surprised

Frankly, I'm some what surprised at the number of dems who voted for the abomination that is the FISA bill, not however that it passed.

Let's see: The chief of police comes to me and says that someone in my town is making meth and getting guns together, perhaps to shoot up the town while on their meth high. He asks me to break into every house in town so that he can be sure that is the case. After I break into every house I'm found out, but the state legislature passes a law that says that as long as the chief asks me to do it, it's ok. So I'm off the hook.

Ok, "I'm not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do," so says congressman Kit Bond and apparently the leaders of the Democrat (can I now use that nasty slur?) party.

So let's see the president, or prime minister, or primer, or Il Duce, or Fuhrer, or King tells me what to do and then I "need to do" it. Even though the law says otherwise. But in the end it turns out that the law is really only what the president, etc. says it is. Isn't that a text book definition of the totalitarian or fascist state?

Just askin'.

Threats

I've finally started to read Lapdogs by Eric Boehart. I've had it around for awhile. I was a gift and I have just not had the energy to pick it up because I thought that it would probably put me in a permanent pissed off state as long as it took to read it.

Well, at any rate I've finally started to read it and I'm only past the Introduction, but already I'm shocked and appalled. He points out the incredible willingness and ability of the far right to threaten and pull off boycotts if they don't like what a specific part of the MSM is reporting -- no matter how correct it is. Further, how this along with other things, tends to assist in forcing the MSM to report as the closet fascists want.

While reading that I all of a sudden thought about the recent Michelle Malkin threat to boycott Duncan Donuts over one of their shills wearing a black and white scarf (once again no link to her, cause I don't feel like it). The allegation being that it was a Palestinian scarf, even though the scarf was a paisley design, if one bothered to look closely obviously not Palestinian.

Did Malkin look stupid if one bothered to investigate. Sort of, but of course that wasn't the point. The point was to prove once again the kind of power these fascists have and how they can control what we are allowed to see, in even the least important part of our media, if they put their minds to it. In fact, it might even be better if what they were trying to do was stupid in a rational world. The point isn't the intelligence, the point is the raw power.

So by forcing Duncan Donuts to take off the offending ad, they simply showed anybody who might question it their real power. This is really good at a time with progressives (Obama/Clinton[?]) all over the news.

The memo and more law stuff

I've just read the NYT article about Yoo's memo. Good god almighty. The fourth amendment doesn't apply because of terrorist attacks. How frightened people have become. Apparently those quaint guys in powdered wigs are just not relevant any more.

"Domestic military operations." What the hell is that? Short of a real invasion or another civil war there should not be any domestic military operations. That was one of the most important concepts in the Constitution (the other being that secular non-religious kind of thing). How to make a country strong enough to protect itself, but not too strong. One of the ways was that the military was not supposed to operate within the country except in very narrow situations.

Why are the people who run this country so frightened? Or are they really, and is this just an excuse? Crap.

The Preachers

Well I am not at all surprised about the whoha (is that two words?) concerning Obama's preacher. After all you can't really speak truth to power here in this country. You have to be white and a reactionary bigot with a mega church to attack this country ---- safely. You also need to be a reactionary white politician to listen and approve it without any down side, except dirty hippy bloggers pointing it out.

Ah well, to go sort of OT. Do you suppose that McCain's "experience" (it really does need to be put in quotes) consists of dropping napalm on civilians, being tortured (or was that harshly interrogated) while a POW, having his second wife buy him a senate seat, and using that senate seat to back (after pretending to speak truth to power) every reactionary thing the current president wants?

Incidentally, weren't the guys who got us into Vietnam and Iraq just chock full of experience.

Just asking.