Month: November 2010

Sorry, for the light posting, but we had our Thanksgiving Dinner at home today, and so it was a long day of cleaning and cooking, along with watching the New York Football Giants prevail. I notice that the Cowboys, Redskins, and Eagles all lost this week, so I can’t ask for more. The long weekend was nice.

So, how bad are these WikiLeaks anyway?

I want to be able to see the trailer for “Revenge of the Electric Car,” but I can’t see it until there are 10,000 likes on the Face Book page for the movie. So I need your help. Please click on the link http://www.facebook.com/revengeoftheelectriccar  go to the top of the page and click that you like the page. If 3,000 something of you do that I can see the trailer.
There are very few things that I can point to that I can say influenced my way of thinking. There are even less things that I can point to that I can say that through their influence they changed my life. Looking back at the last 10 years of my life I can see that being involved, in the most cursory of ways, with the movement s of the EV1 electric car club in California was one of those pivotal moments in my life that ended up changing my life for the better. I went from simply wanting a product that didn’t use petroleum as its fuel, to actively working to give everyone in the world the choice of traveling personally using fuels that didn’t use petroleum as a fuel. In the course of this experience I found that my politics had changed and my view of the world had changed. What could have made such a profound change in my way of thinking? It was a simple mistake of being aware of the possibility of something and then having that something taken away.  

The first related influence that occurred in my life which was later to affect and profoundly change my life was that I lived through the two oil crises of the 1970s. Those events influenced my way of thinking towards alternative fuel and energy. During that period was when I first learned about electric cars as well as ethanol and other alternative fuels. I learned that we could make the change then to alternative fuel because I actually saw those changes happening in my neighborhood. A few families in my hood had purchased Sebring Vanguard Citicar electric vehicles.  Our family participated by getting Gasohol, which was a mixture of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol available from distributors like the American Eagle Gasohol stations that sprang up around America.  

The last of the oil crises seemed to end with Ronald Reagan in 1980. However, my fascination with alternative energy and fuels didn’t end. I spent a good deal of time thinking about alternative fuels and energy. I speculated in my mind about all the things I heard and combined them in my head. I found myself asking questions like, “Why couldn’t we join solar power with electric vehicles and power them that way?” Crazy as that might seem, I wasn’t the only one who thought that way and five years after Ronald Reagan was elected into office the first Tour de Sol was born in Switzerland. The Tour de Sol was a race of vehicles powered by converting the sun’s rays into electricity with solar panels on the actual vehicle and using that electricity to power the car. The idea caught on all over the world and lead to the creation of the World Solar Challenge. The World Solar Challenge was different from the other Tour de Sol races. It was like the Super Bowl of solar car racing. In order to enter the race you had to have at least won or nearly won a previous solar vehicle race.

The World Solar Challenge caught the eyes of the executives of GM who were struggling with unimproved and poorly made product lines that were loosing out to the Japanese. GM seemed in every way to be yesterday’s company, a dinosaur, big and lumbering and incapable of innovation or quality. The leadership of GM decided that they were going to enter this contest and show the world that its engineers were world class and that the company wasn’t just capable of coming up with something new, but able to push hard the very edges of what was possible. Of course GM was an old, lumbering dinosaur in reality so they had to hire an innovative firm to do this for them. They hired AeroVironment, a company headed by Dr. Paul McCready the creator of the Gossamer Albatross, the first human powered airplane to fly over the English Channel. AeroVironment made for GM the Sunraycer solar powered vehicle that averaged 65 miles an hour over the course from Darwin to Adelaide, Australia, and won the race a full two days ahead of second place vehicle. With a relatively small investment GM went from being seen as the “has been” of the automotive industry to the leading edge.

GM’s executives decided that they needed to keep these geniuses on the GM payroll and challenged them to make a marketable electric vehicle prototype to be used in the real world. AeroVironment did just that by coming up with the Impact, a two-seat car that offered sports car performance and nearly 100 miles range using lead acid batteries. The Impact concept car was introduced to the world at the 1990 LA auto show. It was a true sensation. Again, GM, the company left for dead on the side of the road during the 1980s, suddenly looked new, vibrant and innovative.  Between the LA auto show in January to mid-April of the same year the press could do nothing in the automotive world but talk about the possibilities of an electric car and GM’s overwhelming lead in to the market if they should decide to produce the Impact as a product for consumers. Seeing how the electric car prototype had influenced everything in a positive manner for GM and not wanting to return to the bad old days of the 1980s GM’s CEO, Roger Smith announced on April 18, 1990 that the electric car would go into production.

Every event that happened along the way I was keenly aware of. Suddenly, something that I was hoping would happen as a kid going through the 1970s oil crises seemed to be happening in earnest. The California Air Resources Board locked in the reality of electric cars pushing through legislation requiring that electric cars be a big part of the vehicles sold in California with what became known as the “Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate.” I was so excited. I began saving my pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and dollars for the day that I would be able to buy an electric car. Little by little the cars were released in drips and drabs a decade later to the good people of California. Not only was there the Impact, which was renamed the GM EV1, but there were other electric vehicles choices too. There was the Honda, EV+, the Toyota Rav4 EV, the Nissan Altra, the Ford Th!nk and more. Oddly all were only available through lease. Toyota under pressure from the public eventually changed its policy over what to do at the leases end and some 300 Rav4 EVs were sold to the public. These other electric vehicles came into existence because of the power of the Zero Emissions Mandate. I waited patiently for the cars to become available to the rest of the country with my money accumulated in an account ready to be used as soon as the vehicles became available.

Then something completely unexpected happened. The Zero Emissions Mandate was changed and the requirements of producing electric vehicles were removed. Almost instantly the vehicles that had mostly been leased were being recalled. I didn’t understand what was happening. I went online to try to find out what was happening and I could see that the former leaseholders of the GM built EV1 had organized. I remember when Chris Paine began talking about wanting to make a documentary of what was happening. He set up a website for the documentary that was to be called “EV Confidential,” and on that website he posted pictures of crushed EV1s in the Arizona desert. Seeing those vehicles my psyche changed. I was angry. I learned that GM wasn’t the only company collecting up its vehicles and making them disappear. Honda had taken its EV+ vehicles from the dealerships and made them vanish. I later learned that they were shredded at a certified destruction facility. Nissan’s EVs disappeared. The EV1 Club quickly morphed into Don’t Crush, and the organization set its focus on saving the last remaining EVs from the fate that many of the EV1s, all of the Honda EV+’s and the Nissan EVs had experienced. They organized demonstrations to save the Ford Th!nk, which were eventually sent back to Norway where they came from. They saved the Ford Ranger EV, and they found 70 EV1s waiting to be crushed in a back parking lot of GM’s Burbank, California facility.  What to do?

Together with the Rainforest Action Network the former EV1 Club now organized into Don’t Crush set up a vigil in front of the GM facility to stop them from crushing the last of these vehicles.  Although I couldn’t be there with them I followed them into a website where they posted the actions and activities of their days protesting the crushing of these all-important vehicles.  All the while Chris Paine managed to capture all that was going on with his camera. The organization to save the electric vehicle battled as hard as a non-violent protest can battle. They captured national attention in both the print media as well as television. I followed their daily moves through the website genuinely angry about what was going on. When their story hit the cover of the Washington Post I knew that the movement in California that had started so small now had a national reach. A small band of really pissed off citizens had managed to get the attention of millions. But who was going to know their story? A newspaper front page might be great but it is only good for wrapping fish a day later. How do we keep up the push to change not just California’s thinking but also the nation and perhaps the world’s? Chris Paine went on to gather the support for his documentary “EV Confidential” whose name was now to be “Who Killed the Electric Car?” attracting Dean Devlin of Stargate fame as the executive producer and Martin Sheen as the narrator. The vigil was over and all the cars that could be crushed were crushed so Don’t Crush became Plug-In America and changed its focus from saving existing electric vehicles to looking for ways to bring back the electric car.

In the end the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?” I believe had the greatest amount of influence on the general public, companies and Washington. There in one sitting a person who knew nothing about electric cars and the struggle to keep them as a choice for the American people could get a large part of the story. From its very beginnings 100 years ago to the breakthrough innovations in the Impact, from the California’s Air Resources Board’s Zero Emissions Mandate to the crushing of the vehicles. The movie gives you it all.

However, that isn’t the end. I hope you all know that in the intervening years GM has realized the error of its ways and is bringing an electric vehicle with a range extender call the Chevy Volt, that Nissan has reversed itself and is delivering the all electric Nissan Leaf, and that every major automaker on the planet has an electric vehicle program set to bring electric vehicles to market. It seems that what GM and the other automakers wanted to die didn’t die. None of the companies who were preparing parts and innovations for the Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate’s new reality got the memo that the electric car was killed and therefore dead. They kept going and innovating. Alen Cocconi left the AeroVironment and formed a company that produced a 300 mile per charge sports car called the tZero. This car directly lead to the creation of the Tesla Motor Company’s roadster and the Venturi, Fetish, cars with 200+ mile ranges, dragster like acceleration and superior sports car handling. Though NiMH batteries that powered the EV1 came under control of the Chevron Oil Company, the development of the Lithium ion battery has continued to develop offering a much greater energy density than NiMH, which in turn provides either greater range or less space occupied. Time marches on and improvements continue to be made in batteries, motors and more, and again Chris Paine has managed to chronicle the rise of the electric vehicle phoenix from the ashes of demise in his new film “Revenge of the Electric Car.”

I want to be able to see the trailer for “Revenge of the Electric Car,” but I can’t see it until there are 10,000 hits of the Face Book page for the movie. So I need your help. Please click on the link http://www.facebook.com/revengeoftheelectriccar  go to the top of the page and click that you like the page. If a mere 3,000 something of you do that I can see the trailer. Thanks.

Gaianne posted a series of comments on my recent article here about being banned from The Wild, Wild Left blog.

…as the left refuses to look beyond an obsolete analysis, and ask what is actually happening in the world, it becomes as irrelevant as the right.

I answered:

Precisely.

Thank you.

She also wrote:

There are no reality-based ideas remaining anywhere on the political spectrum.

(Actually, her several comments there are more than worthy of being an entire article by themselves. Go read them on the link that I posted above.)

I swear, if I could find a way to propagate my NEWSTRIKE!!!, MEDIASTRIKE!!! and CULTURESTRIKE!!! ideas that did not itself require the media for its propagation, its “reality-based” roots would make a huge dent in the system as it stands now.

(Read on for more)

The reality of the situation is that the only possible positive action left to people who are enmeshed in this system…the only thing that they can do regarding the rot that has set in here that will not result in massive, life-threatening, personal repercussions…is to drop out from said system as far and as fast as they can manage to do so and still remain alive.

The first…and by far the most effective…step?

Stop unquestioningly consuming the media’s storyline.

Simply dropping away from the constant hypnomedia barrage that keeps even most of the best and brightest of us in thrall to its ever-unfolding, totally fictional storyline is an eye-opening experience. I have done so… quite successfully…for well over 7 years now. I began my withdrawal from that particular drug as the media storylined the so-called Republican electoral victory in 2000, went further with the fictionalized coverage of 9/11, even further during the runup to the invasion of Iraq and reached a state of final freedom during Howard Dean’s media-engineered “collapse” and John Kerry’s subsequent loss to G. W. Butch. I am media-sober for over 7 years and I will never, ever return to that addiction.

This can only be accomplished by totally stopping the subconscious consumption of media…news, so-called “culture”, advertising…the works. I sit here this post-Thanksgiving morning in the living room of some of my closest and most loved relatives. The TV is on, as is some mediocre commercial music in another part of the house in their exercise room. They “know” better…at least they think that they do. Last night we laughed and mocked our way through a couple of hours of channel-surfed, rural cable TV. BUT THE TV WAS ON, and that is really all that is needed for the poison to sink in. I have given up trying to tell even my closest friends and relatives about this evil…with the exception of the way that I brought up my son. (Which was thankfully a total success in this aspect.), I can only sit and wait for them to ask. And they don’t. I am near to giving up on the web as well, but since these leftiness blogs are at least theoretically about “asking questions”, I will keep trying for a while.

Imagine if…in a “viral video” sort of way (Disregarding the fact that a video really cannot go viral without at least the tacit consent of the corporate media.)…imagine for a moment what would happen if this movement spread through the culture.

The corporate-owned networks and media would freak!!! They would lose a substantial part of their revenue stream and worse, would actually lose their raison d’etre. They are nothing more than a cultural control mechanism, and if they were to lose their power over even 10% or 15% of the population the results would be catastrophic for those now in real power.

I know. The leftiness clones will at his moment chorus in near-unison:

Not us!!! We’re free thinkers!!!

Really?

An illustration of why I think otherwise:

The little Wild, Wild Left dustup I mentioned above.

I was banned from that leftiness blog…radicaliness, actually… recently essentially for making the simple suggestion that Noam Chomsky and his intellectual, academe-based compatriots should be held accountable to some degree for the ongoing failures of the left here in The United States over the past 50+ plus years.

The immediate, kneejerk reaction?

The horror!!! The unmitigated gall of this unknown Gilroy character to suggest such a thing regarding the most revered member of the American intellectual left!!! How dare he!!!

How did this reaction come about? How was it implanted in the minds of those who reacted in that way?

Hypnomedia…the left wing thereof.

The whole NY Times/PBS/NY Review of Books/tweed-suited, pipe-smoking, totally ineffective leftiness media has taken Mr. Chomsky’s oeuvre… almost totally unapproachable by most readers because of its depth and erudition… and institutionalized it as the be-all and end-all of left wing thought. This is not to say that he should be personally blamed in any way for his efforts except insofar as they have borne almost no practically useful fruit. “Blaming” him would be like blaming high-level automotive engineers whose best plans have been either unused or at the very least mis-used by corporate profit machines like General Motors. Nor was my initial approach to the subject in any way disrespectful of him and his work.

I first stated…as lightly as I could, because the proprietor of that blog was already sky high in hog-heaven over having actually been answered by such a star in the leftiness constellation:

Now…what you REALLY need is for Joe Bageant to call in and have a conversation w/ Mr. Chomsky.

Deconstruct that, Noam baby!!!

I look forward to this program. If Joe can’t be there, I’ll happily sub for him.

When asked “Deconstruct what?” I answered:

Well…sometimes the people on the ground have more validity to their observations than do those who have made the compromises necessary to achieve fame, fortune and tenure.

Joe’s one of those on the ground.

Me too.

Professor Chomsky is one of those that the anti-establishment “establishment” has anointed as one of their own. And look how well that group has done.

He is a brilliant and courageous man, no doubt.

But…when was the last time he walked the streets?

And…the last straw in Diane’s case, I am afraid…I cautioned her:

He has been an important and revered part of the totally rotten academic establishment since 1955. Is he really in touch with what is happening in the streets and the countryside of America? I am a musician, and if he were part that particular musical area of academia, my answer would be an automatic, emphatic and absolutely sure “No, he is not.”

On extensive personal experience.

So I would like to speak to him. Short of that, I would like to hear Joe…who has his own fame baggage to carry but is certainly an honest man…speak to him.

Do not be a star-fucker, Diane.

Intelligence has its own shelf life.

Bet on it.

She hit the roof and still hasn’t come down on the evidence of some of her posts both on this site and on her own.

So it goes.

This post is not really about my experience there. It is about the corporate magician’s right and left hands.

Watch not.

Watch neither.

Trust not.

Don’t watch the stuff that comes out of his (centrist) fly as well.

It’s all bullshit.

And always and everywhere beware the orthodoxy as it is presented by interests whose true interests are…on 50+ years of ample evidence…domination of the human herd by media-enforced hypnofascism.

Beware all media-promoted stars. Sarah Palin, Noam Chomsky and everybody in between.

Look at what has happened to our so-called saviour, Barack Obama.

Reduced to just another centrist hack, it appears. Still talking about “cooperation across the aisle” as if he actually believes that it is possible. He certainly believes that it is possible to convince some large portion of the American public of that possibility, and he is right on the money about that.

Rebel.

Against all of this shit.

Please.

Timothy Leary famously suggested “Tune in, turn on and drop out.” He had it about 2/3rds right. It’s the “turn on” that was off base. We are already “turned on,” almost from birth.

To the hypnomedia.

Tune into it consciously.

And then turn off.

Turn it off.

The “drop out” part?

That happens quite naturally once the hypnomedia conduit is interrupted.

Bet on it.

NEWSTRIKE!!!

MEDIASTRIKE!!!

CULTURESTRIKE!!!

VAYA!!!

I mean…this way surely isn’t working very well, now is it?

Wake the fuck up!

Gotta go teach a buncha smart, ghetto-raised black and hispanic NYC high school students about the real history of the great musics that were made by some of their immediate forebears against overwhelming odds. A history that they mostly do not know because the media has made damned sure that it is not available to them through the channels that they have been told are “theirs.”

Station WTFU once again signing off.

Later…

AG

In theory, this doesn’t sound so bad.

The Republican who will lead the chief investigative committee in the House is planning to vastly expand scrutiny of the Obama administration by seeking new subpoena powers for dozens of federal agency watchdogs in hopes of using their investigations and his own in an aggressive push to cut spending and shrink the government.

The Republican, Representative Darrell Issa of California, who will take over as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has said the government needs “to go on a diet” to help erase the annual budget deficit of $1.4 trillion. His goal as chairman, he said in a recent speech, is to “focus on places where money can be saved, where we can literally close agencies or subagencies or programs.”

Again, in theory, this is something the opposition party should be doing. They should hold hearings and do investigations of the performance of the federal government’s agencies. In doing so, they may provide a service to the administration by forcing them to be disciplined and, in some cases, to stand up to some of their own interest groups who are distorting public policy. And merely having aggressive investigators on the beat is enough to discourage some forms of corruption. All-in-all, I have no problem with Darrell Issa bulking up on staff in order to ferret out areas of waste. I’m all for a leaner, more efficient government. But, you know what? That’s not what Issa is going to do. You know what he’s going to do?

He’s going to identify programs that the Republicans don’t like and then go after them with all his resources, with no regard for the truth, fairness, or the reputations of hard-working public servants. Remember Shirley Sherrod? It’ll be like that, all the time. The Republicans are inventive and they think differently, so it’s hard to predict what kind of nutty stuff they’ll come up with. One they like to recycle is to go around and find every SSI or Welfare check that gets mailed to a liquor store. A small handful of homeless drunks are crazy like that, and why pay bank fees? Naturally, this justifies getting rid of a silly program based on the principle that all children need basic nutrition and shelter, even if their parents are deadbeats.

The possibilities are endless. Issa already has a wish list.

Mr. Issa has already drawn up a list of big targets: $40 billion a year in fraud or waste in Medicare; tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to the government-controlled mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; $8.5 billion in losses by the Postal Service in the last fiscal year; tens of millions of dollars spent on redundant programs within federal agencies or squandered through corrupt contracting procedures.

What’s funny is that the Republicans could get some support from the administration and the Democrats for all of those issues if they weren’t being used as a partisan cudgel to bash government. I’m a progressive and I don’t support waste and fraud in Medicare (Republicans in Florida seem to reward it), a catastrophic business model at the U.S. Postal Service, redundant programs, stupid contracting practices, or failing to reform GSE’s.

It looks like Boehner and Issa plan on being more disciplined than Newt Gingrich and Dan Burton, so presumably our nation’s watermelons are safe. But our sanity is not. Chairman Issa is going to take Fox News and the right’s fantasies and try to prove them for the Congressional Record. And that can’t be good for anyone’s blood pressure.

Oh, Christ. Now I not only have to put up with Black Friday, but Cyber Monday, as well? Why don’t we name each and every one of the 28 shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas? And we can have different discounts for each day.

It’s interesting that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated the Family Research Center (FRC) as a hate group and now sees no real distinction between them and the Aryan Nation groups. Unsurprisingly, the FRC has responded with fury. They point with righteous indignation to their recent political successes:

The Left’s smear campaigns of conservatives is also being driven by the clear evidence that the American public is losing patience with their radical policy agenda as seen in the recent election and in the fact that every state, currently more than thirty, that has had the opportunity to defend the natural definition of marriage has done so. Earlier this month, voters in Iowa sent a powerful message when they removed three Supreme Court justices who imposed same-sex marriage on the state. Would the SPLC also smear the good people of Iowa?

Yet, the SPLC didn’t focus on the debate over the appropriate definition of marriage. They focused on homophobic statements made by FRC officials. Specifically, they focused on statements made by Peter Sprigg and Tim Dailey.

Both Dailey and Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia (see related story, p. 31): Sprigg has written that most men who engage in same-sex child molestation “identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual,” and Dailey and Sprigg devoted an entire chapter of their 2004 book Getting It Straight to similar material. The men claimed that “homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses” and similarly asserted that “homosexuals are attracted in inordinate numbers to boys.”

More recently, in March 2008, Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on, last February, to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied. At around the same time, Sprigg claimed that allowing gay people to serve openly in the military would lead to an increase in gay-on-straight sexual assaults.

They also note that current FRC head Tony Perkins once paid over $80,000 for Klan chief David Duke’s mailing list and has made appearances before the Klan-related Council of Conservative Citizens. So, the designation of the FRC as a hate group is not based on their views on marriage, but on their propensity to pal around with white supremacists while spreading vile lies about gay behavior and calling for their deportation.

On the other hand, it’s hard not to see the designation as in some respects political in nature. The dealings with racist groups are quite old: those cited occurred in 1996 and 2001. While the outbursts of Peter Sprigg and Tim Dailey are not necessarily representative of the FRC, at least not as their ‘official’ positions. This does seem like a new development for the SPLC. They are expanding the scope of what they consider a hate group from what it has been historically. Here is how they justify it:

Generally, the SPLC’s listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling. Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups.

And to expand on that:

SPLC Research Director Heidi Beirich told me the FRC is part of a growing list of what the SPLC calls anti-gay groups masking themselves under the guise of conservatism or Christianity.

“What this really is is a wholesale defamation attack on gays and lesbians,” Beirich said. “Some of the stuff is just as crude if you compare it to, say, the Klan’s racism. But a lot of it’s a little more sophisticated and they try to make it more scientific even though what they’re pushing are falsehoods.”

…As Beirich told me, there is no difference between the FRC and the KKK in the eyes of the SPLC now…

I asked her if a Republican choosing to address the FRC convention next year would be making the same choice as one who addressed an Aryan Nation rally.

“Yeah,” she told me. “What we’re saying is these [anti-gay] groups perpetrate hate — just like those [racist] organizations do.”

Ms. Beirich did clarify that she doesn’t think all supporters of the FRC are aware of or necessarily agree with the organization’s hateful anti-gay message and that they may be primarily attracted to their evangelical purpose. That distinction alone, it seems to me, makes it quite a reach to say that making a speech before the FRC is no different than making one before the Aryan Nation.

It’s pretty hard to get me to say a word in the defense of the Family Research Council but I don’t see them as in the same league as the Klan. But even if I see a bit of irrational exuberance and false equivalence here, that doesn’t mean that I disagree with the overall point, which is that the FRC is spewing lies that foster hate and that can lead to and be used to justify violence against gays. It goes beyond a mere disagreement about the proper legal definition of marriage.

Whether this will hurt the credibility of the SPLC as much as that of the FRC remains to be seen. It will certainly lead the right to make a loud and concerted effort to brand the SPLC as a purely political organization that serves the left. But, at the same time, politicians now have to consider whether they want to appear before a group that has been designated by the SPLC as a hate group. It should be remembered that the SPLC earned its sterling reputation by using civil law suits to all but destroy the Ku Klux Klan. That’s not a group and a reputation that you want to going up against.

My hope is that the SPLC doesn’t get marginalized and lose its moral authority over this, and that the FRC cleans up its act and polices itself better so that they are not allowing hate speech to get co-mingled with their political mission. I vehemently disagree with their positions on social issues, including gay rights, but I can distinguish between political differences and hate. Maybe this humiliating rebuke will get the FRC to make those distinctions better in the future.

Oh my God! Willie Nelson was smoking pot on his tour bus. I sure am glad that the Border Patrol put a stop to that outrage. The next thing you know they’ll do something crazy like arresting Tommy Chong for selling bongs on the internet. When will these hippies ever learn? So, what does possession of six ounces get you in Texas these days?

This story was published yesterday in the alternative press because no major news sources seem to be carrying it. “Happy Thanksgiving” was Phil Weiss’ cynical appraisal as Israel apparently used the American holiday to mete out more destruction of Palestinian life in the West Bank, life that already exists on the edge of abject poverty.

Israeli forces demolished Palestinian homes in the Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills today in what seems as a wave of demolitions following yesterday’s demolitions all across the West Bank. Non-violent leaders from Beit Ummar have also been arrested in night raids. Grassroots organizers Mousa and Yousef Abu Maria were arrested from their homes as harassment continues in Beit Ummar

After carrying demolitions in the villages of Qarawat Bani Hassan near Salfeet, al-Jiftlik in the Jordan Valley and Hizma near Jerusalem yesterday, Israeli bulldozers returned to the Jordan Valley today. At 6:30 this morning, Israeli Civil Administration bulldozers accompanied by soldiers and armored military jeeps entered the Jordan Valley village of Khirbet Yarza, east of Tubas, and demolished the village’s mosque, houses and four animal shelters. The demolitions rendered eleven people homeless.

LINK: http://mondoweiss.net/2010/11/israel-conducts-wave-of-demolitions-including-mosque-across-west-bank.

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Since 9/11 the rallying cry of conservatives has been the authoritarian’s mantra: If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t worry about an intrusive government.  Now that an agency has finally gone too far for some of them, they have changed their tune.  Civil libertarians should do something about that, and quickly – before it changes back.

For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

I’ve been blogging for just about three and a half years now, and in the last week or so I have finally seen some movement on the subject of my very first blog post: an appeal for principled conservatives to push back on the civil liberties overreach of the executive branch.  The right has generally had phenomenal ideological cohesion, so anyone who breaks ranks is usually an outsider to begin with (Andrew Sullivan, Daniel Larison) or quickly becomes one (Bruce Bartlett).

For most conservatives, the politics are the principle; that allows them to take contradictory positions over relatively short periods of time without recrimination.  As Bartlett unhappily discovered, Republicans can cheerfully discard the pieties they mouth if it will help ensure a majority.  Criticizing an expanding governmental role in health care will get you ostracized in an era of GOP rule, but it makes you a member in good standing during a Democratic one.

So the recent concern about the invasive and ineffective TSA search procedures is not surprising.  Now that a Democrat is president there is flourishing concern over what the big, bad government is doing to innocent citizens.  But as Adam Serwer writes, “This comprehensive assault on individual freedom didn’t occur in a vacuum; it occurred because conservatives were successful in frightening Americans into choosing security over liberty every time the choice was before them, and because America’s elected officials take being blamed for a terrorist attack more seriously than their oath to protect the Constitution.”  John Cole has been impatiently pointing this out as well.  On this and other issues, right wing leaders tell their base what to believe.

Two aspects of it are surprising, though.  The first is the way it has split, more cleanly than any other issue for the last few years, along establishment vs. outsider lines.  DC newspapers have rallied (via) to support the government (via).  It has not gone unnoticed.  Both liberal and conservative commentators inside the Beltway – see Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein on the left, for example, and Marc Thiessen and the National Review editorial board on the right.  See also Thomas Sowell if you need some comic relief.  The Weekly Standard, bless its heart, did not have a single TSA item on its front page as of Wednesday.

In fairness, Andrew McCarthy has a nice take if you ignore the part on profiling, which not only does not work but does not even stand up to even basic scrutiny.  Mona Charen has a very good article, too.  Her call for screeners trained not to profile, check a laundry list or stare at a computer screen but in the more intuitive art of “how to detect things” strikes me as right on the mark.

That said, the tone from the capitol skews heavily towards defending the procedures.  Which leads to the second surprising point: criticism is actually making its way to Republican leaders.  For instance, when incoming House Majority Leader John Boehner skipped past the security checkpoint with his entourage, the most pungent response came from the right:

But maybe it was a good thing he didn’t have to go through the scanner. From the way Boehner behaved, it’s clear he faced a real risk that the TSA agents might have found a foreign object hidden in his rectum.

That would be his head.

(Note that the author is in New Jersey and not DC.)  Bush-era authoritarianism has had a head-on collision with Obama-era loathing of Democrats, and it is causing many on the right to finally reject the “do what we say and shut up” attitude favored in the early years of the WAR ON TERROR.

There are caveats, of course.  The biggest one, noted in Serwer’s piece above and also by Glenn Greenwald, is that the real irritant on the right may be that the erosion of civil liberties has, inevitably, reached them.  When it is used against Muslimy types this is fine, but when used against fine upstanding pillars of the community such as themselves it becomes insupportable vexation.  Also, as Greenwald notes, the “solution” most energetically embraced on the right is no solution at all.

Still, for the moment there is a strong push back on unreasonable searches from the right, which is a real novelty these days.  Those of us who have been calling attention to the issue in vain for years, hoping conservatives would rouse themselves to object, should make the most of this opportunity.  I don’t despair, as Greenwald seems to, of the purity of their intentions or even the effectiveness of their proposed remedies (provided they do not get implemented).  Civil libertarians should instead seize this fleeting moment.  The stars rarely align like this, and they do not stay aligned for long.