Sadly, NDAA Goes into Effect

77 Comments

1. 

   TarheelDem on December 31, 2011 at 6:18 pm

   Occupy the Capitol is on Jan 17.  Getting the indefinite detention provisions repealed is one of the many issues being discussed with members of Congress.

   The fundamental issue being the reluctance of Congress to talk to their constituents in a way that their constituents are treated as the boss instead of the servant.  This goes back to the 40-year emphasis by Congressional staffs on message control.  Which essentially makes the Member of Congress unaccountable to his constituents between elections.  It is an issue that affects both parties and across the ideological spectrum.

   • 

     TarheelDem on December 31, 2011 at 6:59 pm

     Correction:  The event is called Occupy Congress and it occurs both in Washington and in towns with Congressional District offices as a set of coordinated autonomous actions.  This can range from setting appointments with staff or members of Congress to protest to direct actions.  And need not be confined to one event at each location.

     The emphasis is on getting as many diverse people involved as possible on one day doing what they feel is necessary or what they are ethically motivated to do.

     The message: Congress listens to us, not big money.  (Yeah, yeah, that’s a hope, a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will)

2. 

   Ed J on December 31, 2011 at 6:41 pm

   “By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said after Congress approved the bill.

   Having a Republican in the White House really sucks.

   You say Obama will not abuse the power and I believe that may be true. But he certainly has “enshrined” that power for all future presidents.

   Obama has caved so much he oughtta be called the spelunker president.

   • 

     BooMan on December 31, 2011 at 6:54 pm

     For once, I have no rebuttal.  

     • 

       Arthur Gilroy on December 31, 2011 at 10:08 pm

       For once, I have no rebuttal.

       Good on ya!!!

       Yer gettin’ there.

       Don’t stop now.

       (I knew you had it in you!)

       AG

     • 

       Brendan Skwire on January 1, 2012 at 10:34 am

       see,i heard from someone that it was all lies about the NDAA. Exaggerations.

       • 

         joe from Lowell on January 1, 2012 at 8:18 pm

         And you heard something else from someone else.

         And that seems to be the limit of your ability to think about the issue.  “Someone said this, and then someone else said that.  I think I’ll make this statement repeatedly!”

         • 

           Brendan Skwire on January 3, 2012 at 9:04 pm

           i’m referring to booman, dumbass.

   • 

     ishmael on December 31, 2011 at 7:06 pm

     Too many Democrats are entirely comfortable with the national security state and the steady erosion of civil liberties. Obama telegraphed this back when he changed his mind on the FISA/wiretapping mess so I’m no longer surprised by his disregard for civil liberties.

     • 

       KNUCKLEHEAD on January 1, 2012 at 3:22 pm

       Civil liberties thru FISA glasses.
       I made this when that happened.

       FISA
       

3. 

   BooMan on December 31, 2011 at 6:54 pm

   On the other hand, my slow-smoked beef brisket came out perfectly and is delicious.  

   • 

     esquimaux on December 31, 2011 at 9:44 pm

     good to hear. I was going to ask.
     So what kind of smoker? The cylindrical kind, fed charcoal? I got one of those at a garage sale and still haven’t tried it.

4. 

   Arthur Gilroy on December 31, 2011 at 7:04 pm

   “I’m kind of pissed…”

   ” I wish…”

   “I understand that he’s not planning on abusing the power he has been handed, but it would be better if he wasn’t creating a law he thinks needs, in part, to be repealed. After all, what if he is unsuccessful?”

   “… crappy…”

   Weak, Booman.

   Very weak.

   Very fucking weak.

   And yet you still support him.

   It’s dawning on you though, isn’t it?

   Slowly.

   You been had.

   Sorry.

   I wish you a Happy New Year. I really do.

   But until you start listening to your conscience it ain’t gonna be.

   Not really.

   Just forced “Ho ho hos” and a whole lotta “Uh ohs!”

   Bet on it.

   NDAA? You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

   Wait’ll the Iran thing gets good ‘n hot.

   You know he’s gonna run it, don’tcha. Yes he is. Especially if he’s getting some serious heat from whichever chimp survives the RatPub Death March that’s now just about ready to really begin.

   Uh oh!

   What if they try to block the Straits of Hormuz? Sink a few ships in strategic spots. Mine the joint.

   Uh oh!

   What’s Obama gonna do? Send a coupla kill teams and some drones out after Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

   Please.

   It ain’t gonna be that simple.

   UH OH!!!

   You been had.

   Bet on it.

   AG

   P.S. Barack Obama…”a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics.”  Dr. Adolph Reed Jr., 1996

   Yup.

   He pinned it. 15 years ago.

   We’ve all been had. Some more than others, though.

   Sorry.

   Happy New Year anyway.

   • 

     BooMan on December 31, 2011 at 8:02 pm

     you need to relax.  

     Seriously.  

     Our president is flawed.  He’s a good man who is doing a very good job in a very fucked up system.  

     The bill is a dangerous precedent.  He shouldn’t have signed it.  It could have nasty consequences.  But it’s also not as bad as a lot of people are making it out to be.  

     What you ought to do is get down on your knees each morning and thank your gods that Barack Obama ran and won the presidency, because we’d be fucked if he hadn’t.  

     Could we be fucked anyway?

     Yeah, that’s a distinct possibility, but not because the president is a bad man.  

     • 

       Davis X Machina on December 31, 2011 at 8:31 pm

       Now, now, Booman, those contradictions just don’t heighten themselves, you know…

     • 

       Arthur Gilroy on December 31, 2011 at 10:04 pm

       What you ought to do is get down on your knees each morning and thank your gods that Barack Obama ran and won the presidency, because we’d be fucked if he hadn’t.

       No.

       What you and a whole lot of other so-called “Progressives oughta do is get on up offa your knees and start looking around for a true anti-war, anti-surveillance state, anti-Blood For Oil economic imperialism, Anti-PermaGov president, because you most certainly do not have one now.

       You have a capitulator. Nothing more and nothing less.

       Have you read Alexander Cockburn’s article summing up the year over at Counterpoint? You should.

       Here are some Obomber related excepts.

       Lest we forget:

       Goodbye to 2011, Year of the Rabbit, Welcome 2012, Year of the Dragon

       by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

       January 5, 2010

       Torture is now solidly installed in America’s repressive arsenal, not in the shadows where it has always lurked, but up front and central, vigorously applauded by prominent politicians.  Rituals of coercion and humiliation seep through the culture, to the extent that before Christmas American travelers began to rebel at the invasive pat-down searches, conducted by the TSA’s airport security teams, groping around bosoms and crotches.

       The American liberal conscience began to make its accommodation with torture in June, 1977, which was the month the London Sunday Times published a major expose of torture of Palestinians by the Israeli armed forces and the security agency, Shin Bet. Suddenly American supporters of Israel were arguing that certain techniques — sensory deprivation, prolonged stress positions while hooded, incarceration in “cells” the size of packing crates, etc ? somehow weren’t really torture, or  were morally justifiable torture  under “ticking time bomb” theory.

       —snip—

       January 28

       President Obama’s state of the union: It was all very, very familiar.  America has lost its technological dominance. Solution: Kennedy’s New Frontier , when the shocking challenge of the Russian sputnik, launched into space in 1957, led to  the US moon shot   which in turn “unleashed an age of innovation.”  America now faces another “sputnik moment.” The challenge:  to “out-innovate, out-educate and outbuild the rest of the world. “

       This is to be achieved by a green revolution in energy, better schools and teachers, efficient government subservient to the needs of business, less debt.

       Every president calls for Americans to do better at science. Clinton made a veritable industry out of it, also out of “reinventing government”, which Obama also proposes to rehab in the form of a new onslaught on burdensome regulation, so crippling to the American entrepreneurial spirit.

       The left got a vague pledge from Obama not to mess with Social Security plus a rhetorical kick at the oil companies. The right got  substantive support for lowering corporate taxes  plus all sorts of agreeable commitments about cutting Medicare and so forth.

       Obama seemed to trying to stage a replay of his own, of the US economy in the 1950s. “We do big things.” No we don’t. We do Stupid Big Things, dating back to that last heyday of Stupid Big Thing Thinking – dam constructon in the 1930s, surging to the disaster of the Glen Canyon dam and Lake Powell in the 1950s, the same decade freeway construction – Big Concrete — destroyed city after city the same way – albeit more permanently — Big Bombing destroyed Germany and many countries thereafter.

       –snip—

       March 18

       Americans read the increasingly panic-stricken reports of deepening catastrophe at Fukushima Daichi, speed to the pharmacy to look for iodine and ask, “It’s happened there; can it happen here?” They already know it can, and almost certainly will.

       The late great environmentalist David Brower, used to tell audiences solemnly, ” Nuclear plants are incredibly complex technological devices for locating earthquake faults.”

       President Obama  took plenty of money from the nuclear industry for his presidential campaign and in his State of the Union address last January reaffirmed his commitment to “clean, safe” nuclear power, as insane a statement as pledging commitment to a nice clean form of syphilis. This week Obama’s press spokesman confirmed that nuclear energy “remains a part of the President’s overall energy plan.” As Will Parrish reports in a terrific piece in our latest newsletter, Obama was flacking for boosted plutonium production even as Fukushima Daichi went into meltdown.

       The United States produces more nuclear energy than any other nations. It has 104 nuclear plants, many of them old, many prone to endless leaks and kindred malfunctions, all of them dangerous.

       Perhaps the news that Japanese nuclear reactors have been damaged and that clouds of official deception are already rising above them will cool the revival of enthusiasm for building new nuclear plants here in the US, spearheaded politically  by President Obama and okayed by major green groups using the cover of alleged anthropogenic global warming, as long ago planned by the nuclear industry.

       —snip—

       May 13

       Pinko terror-symps and the “rule of law” gang  may cavil and whine at the lack of legal propriety in the execution of Osama , but it’s not cutting much ice with liberal America.  For long years what might be called the “progressive” segment of American voters have chafed at Republican gibes that their guy Obama is a wimp, all the more irritably because deep down many of them thought the charge had some merit.

       It’s wondrous what two expanding bullets to the head of an unarmed man will do. The chorus of approval for the SEALs covers the liberal spectrum.  The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill exulted , as did Gary Wills on the New York Review of Books site , with an ecstatic paean, “The President’s Crack Team”, concluding, “we should keep in mind what superb things can be done by our Navy Seals. And we should keep somewhere in the back of our minds a remembrance that the one ultimately pulling the trigger in both Seal actions was the President of the United States.”

       —snip—

       May 25

       At home and abroad President Barack Obama trumpets Uncle Sam’s virtues and dispenses patronizing homilies to other nations on how to behave themselves and honor freedom and democracy. This last week it’s been Europe’s turn to hear these self-righteous preachments.

       Wearisome  though these exhibitions of  US’s double standards abroad may be, they pale before the macabre spectacle of Obama and Clinton extolling the moral credentials of a country with a vast gulag of some 2.3 million behind bars — some 743 prisoners per 100,000 population, compared to Russia’s 580, China’s 186, England and Wales’ 154 and India’s 32. African Americans, who are one eighth the nation’s population, are almost half its 2.3 million prisoners, and Latinos, also an eighth of the U.S., are more than a quarter of those locked down.  In America today more than 7 million people are under correctional supervision.

       —snip—

       August 4

       Of course he blew it. Whether by artful design or by sheer timidity is immaterial. He blew it. Two days before the United States was officially set to default on its debts on August 2, Barack Obama had the Republicans where he wanted them: All he had to do was announce that he’d trudged the last half mile towards a deal but that there’s no pleasing  fanatics who  reject all possibilities of compromise, who are ready and eager to shut down the government, to see seniors starve and vets denied their benefits. So, Obama could proclaim, he was invoking the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution which states that the “validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.”

       Obama could have done that, but he didn’t. At the eleventh hour and the fifty-fifth minute he threw in the towel, and allowed the  Republicans to exult that they’d got 95 per cent of what they wanted: cuts in social programs,  a bipartisan congressional panel to shred at its leisure what remains of the social safety net, no tax hikes for the rich, no serious slice in the military budget..

       —snip—

       November 16

       What next? Thus far the OWS movement has mostly been evoked by its participants in terms of self-education and consciousness-raising about the nature of America’s political economy. There’s been a lot of talk about a brave new world being born. One fellow chided me for not writing more about the movement which he hailed as “the most militant upsurge from the Left since the Vietnam War, the most frontal assault on the worst features of capitalism since the Great Depression.”
 
This is a vast overstatement. In terms of substantive achievements, OWS has a long way to go, which is scarcely a reason for reproof since it only really got going in September. “The most frontal assault on the worst features of capitalism since the Great Depression?” Scarcely.

       The early 1960s Civil Rights Movement  prompted the Civil Rights Act, and Medicare, the latter being effectively socialized health insurance for the senior crowd. Pushed by the popular movements, President Johnson and a Democratic Congress passed a flood of laws.

       These days corporate lobbies own the President and the US Congress and the regulatory agencies. National economic policy is laid down by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, an errand boy of the banks. He took over from Hank Paulson, also an errand boy for the banks. If Obama is not re-elected in 2012, another errand boy will be waiting in the wings.

       In the 1930s Roosevelt developed his New Deal program in part to head off mass movements to his left. In the 1960s Kennedy and Johnson similarly responded to the challenge of mass movements. Today, the OWSers have registered a presence and won considerable public support, which should not be surprising because America is in poor shape, the rich unpopular and politicians despised. But, as yet, there is no sign of any material political consequence deriving from this popularity.

       Four years ago a candidacy was gathering momentum, declaring that the time had come in America for a moral awakening, for a change in national consciousness, a rising above self-interest and partisanship. Young people rallied to the call. Obama swept into the White House and promptly stuck a `Business As Usual’ sign on the door of the Oval Office.

       Michael Hudson lays out a minimal economic program on how to clean out the Augean stables. He calls for a financial Clean Slate:

       “To restore the kind of normalcy that made America rich, the most important long-term policy would be to recognize what is going to be inevitable for every economy. Debts need to be written down – and the politically easiest way to cut through the tangle is to write them off altogether. That would free the bottom 99% from their debt bondage to the top 1%. It would be a Clean Slate, starting over – and trying to do things right this time around. The creditors have not used the banking system to make America more productive and richer. They have used it as a vehicle to reduce the population to debt serfdom.

       “A debt write-down sounds radical and unworkable, but it’s been done since World War II with great success. It is the program the Allies carried out in the German economy in that country’s 1947 currency reform. This was the policy that created Germany’s Economic Miracle. And America could experience a similar miracle.”

       —snip—

       December 8

       Obama has seized on Teddy Roosevelt as his role model in denouncing those destroying the supposed guarantee of the American Way, strangely defining’s TR’s philosophy as one guaranteeing that every citizen gets a fair bounce on the trampoline, soaring into the safe harbor of “the middle class”.
 
As for imperial destiny, last month Obama did his own reprise on the Great White Fleet, opening a new US marine base in Australia and shaking his fist at China.

       Last  Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kansas where TR, attempting a political comeback in 1910, slagged corporate power for the benefit of his audience of 30,000 prairie populists, Obama told a crowd of 1,200: “At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.”

       When in doubt, wheel on Teddy Roosevelt. It’s in every Democratic president’s playbook.  TR was president from 1901 to 1909. He was manly, ranching in North Dakota, exploring the Amazon and nearly expiring on the River of Doubt. He was an imperialist con amore, charging up San Juan Hill, sending the Great White Fleet round the world, proclaiming America’s destiny as an enforcer on the world stage. He loved wilderness,  mostly through the sights of a big game hunter’s rifle — a wilderness  suitably cleansed of Indians. “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians,” he wrote in The Winning of the West, “but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”

       When necessary he could play the populist rabble-rouser’s card, flaying the trusts, railing against “the malefactors of great wealth”.  But on TR’s watch the modern, centralized corporate American state came of age. LBJ loved TR for his “toughness.” Draft-dodging Bill Clinton invoked TR as his ideal. At least Johnson and Clinton had elements in them  of TR’s most admirable trait – gusto, something of which Obama is dismally devoid.

       —snip—

       A couple of months ago  came a mile marker in America’s steady slide downhill towards the status of a Banana Republic, with Obama’s assertion that he has the right as president to order secretly the assassination, without trial, of a US citizen he deems to be working with terrorists. This followed his betrayal in 2009 of his pledge to end the indefinite imprisonment without charges or trial of prisoners in Guantanamo.

       Now, after months of declaring that he would veto such legislation, Obama has now crumbled and will soon sign a monstrosity called the Levin/McCain detention bill, named for its two senatorial sponsors, Carl Levin and John McCain. It’s snugged into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

       The detention bill mandates – don’t glide too easily past that word –  that all accused terrorists be indefinitely imprisoned by the military rather than in the civilian court system; this includes US citizens within the borders of the United States.  Obama supporters have made strenuous efforts to suggest that US citizens are excluded from the bill’s provisions. Not so. “It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,” says Senator Lindsay  Graham, a big backer of the bill. “And when they say, `I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, `Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.'” The bill’s co-sponsor, Democratic senator, cosponsor of the bill, Carl  Levin says it was the White House itself that demanded that the infamous Section 1031 apply to American citizens.

       Anyone familiar with this sort of “emergency” legislation knows that those drafting the statutes like to cast as wide a net as possible. In this instance  the detention bill authorizes use of military force against anyone who “substantially supports” al-Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces”. Of course “associated forces” can mean anything. The bill’s language mentions  “associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or who has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”
 
This is exactly the sort of language that can be bent at will by any prosecutor. Protest too vigorously the assassination of US citizen Anwar al Awlaki by American forces in Yemen in October and one day it’s not fanciful to expect the thud of the military jackboot on your front step, or on that of any anti-war organizer, or any journalist whom some zealous military intelligence officer deems to be giving objective support to the forces of Evil and Darkness.

       Mindful that the votes of liberals can be useful, even vital in presidential elections, pro-Obama supporters of the bill claim  that it doesn’t codify “indefinite detention.” But indeed it does. The bill explicitly authorizes “detention under the law of war until the end of hostilities.”

       Will the bill hurt Obama? Probably not too much, if at all. Liberals are never very energetic in protecting constitutional rights. That’s more the province of libertarians and other wackos like Ron Paul  actually prepared to draw lines in the sand in matters of principle.

       Simultaneous to the looming shadow of indefinite internment by the military for naysayers, we have what appears to be immunity from prosecution for private military contractors retained by the US government, another extremely sinister development. The corporations involved are now arguing in court that they should be exempt from any investigation into the allegations against them because, among other reasons, the US government’s interests in executing wars would be at stake if corporate contractors can be sued.  They are also invoking a new, sweeping defense. The new rule is termed `battlefield preemption’ and aims to eliminate any civil lawsuits against contractors that take place on any `battlefield’.

       You’ve guessed it. As with “associated forces”, an elastic concept discussed above, in the Great War on Terror the entire world is a “battlefield”.

       Suppose now we take the new powers of the military in domestic law enforcement, as defined in the detention act, and anticipate the inevitable, that the military delegates these powers to private military contractors. CACI International or a company owned by, say Goldman Sachs, could enjoy delegated powers to arrest any US citizen here within the borders of the USA, “who has committed a belligerent act or who has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces,” torture them to death and then claim “battlefield preemption”.

       Don’t laugh.

       Indeed.

       Don’t laugh.

       It hurts too much.

       Goodbye to 2011, Year of the Rabbit, Welcome 2012, Year of the Dragon

       We already know who the Rabbit has been.

       

       Who’s gonna be the Dragon?

       Hmmmmm???

       

       Could be…

       AG

       • 

         BooMan on December 31, 2011 at 10:35 pm

         that is some of the most boring anti-American swill imaginable.

         As a musician, you should be embarrassed.  It’s like serving up Menudo as Tito Fuentes.  

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 1, 2012 at 12:27 am

           That’s Tito Puente, Booman. Your accuracy in reporting is generally lacking these days. Tito Fuentes was a Cuban-born 2nd baseman for the SF Giants. That’s like serving up mambo as merengue. Kid keeping you up? Wait’ll he’s real trouble. You cannot imagine.

           At the stroke of midnight…not by any planning whatsoever, it’s just the way things worked out…I finished harmonizing a piece of music that I first started writing about 40 years ago. It took me that long for my head to catch up with my soul. I do keep trying. You should too.

           I am neither “boring” nor anti-American, Booman. I am simply anti-murder and anti-theft and I do not care who is running the game. I have roots in this country that go back to the mid-1600s on my father’s side of the family, and that means roughly about 20 generations of his family plus several more on my Irish immigrant side…say 24 generations total…have lived and died here.  20 generations plus 4 generations equals more than 65,500 families of blood relatives on a 2 times 2 progression, and 65,500 families is a whole lotta people buried. I care deeply for this country and I do not want to see it slide into a Roman-like decline. But that is precisely where we are headed on any number of levels.

           Watch.

           AG

         • 

           BooMan on January 1, 2012 at 12:40 am

           It’s the fucking auto-spelling.  It fills in for you when you make a typo and if you don’t see it, you’re publishing the wrong word.  

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 1, 2012 at 1:24 am

           Yeah, I know.

           And it’s the fucking auto-media that is propelling you right into a cul-de-sac.

           Turn ’em both off.

           Check out the Glenn Greenwald article on Salon about which I posted below.

           I’m not alone, baby.

           Not by a long shot.

           But you’re gonna be.

           Soon.

           The contradictions between Obama’s repeated actions and his rhetoric are simply too massive to ignore. And Paul is now getting coverage. Why? Because he’s right, that’s why. He can no longer be ignored.

           Forget the polls, too. You want a poll? An omen of things to come? OK, here’s one. That singer who tweeted some kind of Paul appreciation a couple of days ago? Whatsername? Kelly Clarkson? (She’s pure schlock, by the way. Packaged supermarket salami on white bread. With mayo and a heavy helping of auto-tune.) Check it out:

           Ron Paul supporters blow up album sales for Kelly Clarkson 28 spots after she takes heat for his Twitter endorsement

           Singer Kelly Clarkson’s endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Twitter Thursday cost her some long-time fans but those new ones are pushing her higher in the charts.

           In an apparent shedding of skin, perhaps of even those who already had her album, Ms Clarkson’s loss of previous devotees gained her new ones in Dr Paul supporters pushing her album “Stronger” to number 14 on Amazon.com’s best selling list within 24 hours.

           By Friday it was at 13, up 28 spots from her former rank at number 41

           .

           More.

           Clarkson’s “Stronger” climbed from #38 to #7 on Amazon’s sales list between Thursday, when Clarkson threw her support behind Paul, and Friday afternoon, CNN reported. By Saturday, the album inched up further, to #2 on Amazon. It also stood at #10 on Apple’s iTunes Charts.

           What does this mean?

           It means that the youngish white bread voters are speaking out. They are not heavily “polled,” not really. They’re the mobile phone generation. Not like the settled, older middle class. Even if they are called by a polling organization, many of them will look at the caller info and then simply ignore it. But they are out there and they are supporting Ron Paul. My bet? Whatever poll numbers Ron Paul has on the day before the caucus? He’ll get 10 percentage points higher once the caucus votes are counted. Maybe even more. Watch.

           AG

         • 

           IL JimP on January 1, 2012 at 1:58 pm

           Booman –

           I don’t know if you all have had the fair use discussion over here but I’ve seen it on a few other sites.  Some of AG’s posts might be crossing the line and I would hate to see this site go down because of it.

           Just thought I’d bring it up, I don’t know what your thoughts are.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 2, 2012 at 4:28 am

           I would hate to see this site go down because of it.

           So would I. I can find no cogent definition of “fair use.” “Brief excerpt” is about as good as it seems to get. No word number, no percentage number. Please tell me…which specific sites have actually “gone down” to this amorphous rule? (It sounds more like a meme, actually. Like “fair trade,” whatever the fuck that means.)

           I would really like to know. I have been quoting extensively…always with a link and always with many parts left out…for nearly 8 years online and so far none of the sites on which I have posted have ever been taken down or even in any way threatened with such action.

           AG

           P.S. By the way…exactly who or what would be the taker downer? The F.B.I? The Federal Bureau of the Internet? Please. Not for another year or so at least. Too much money being made on the net. Bet on it. After the crash? Maybe, if the Feds aren’t too busy shipping dissidents to their friendly local Guantanamos to be redumacated.

           I can see a right-wing  American version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution coming down the pike.

           The Cultural Resolution. Accept our take on how things ought to be or die.

           Watch.

           An Abu Ghraib of opinion.

           Could happen…

           I see hints of it in the media. Talking head after talking head spouting whatever PermaGov talking points are the rule of the day.

           “Ron Paul is a fruitcake.”

           “Iran is a nuclear threat.”

           “The Occupy Movement is full of dirty hippies and it has no program.”

           Like dat.

           Disagree at your own risk even now. Soon? It could get worse. Much worse. Bet on that as well.

         • 

           IL JimP on January 2, 2012 at 9:48 am

           the lawyers I’ve discussed it with seem to indicate a couple paragraphs at the most, you’re copying and pasting large sections of articles

           It’s dangerous

         • 

           IL JimP on January 2, 2012 at 9:49 am

           the people who would take it down wouldn’t be some entity it would be lawsuits from the owners of the intellectual property

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 2, 2012 at 11:11 am

           What lawyers?

           Have they actually done anything about it?

           Has anyone done anything about it?

           Anywhere?

           Please cite some actions, not just a few unnamed lawyers. There are lawyer’s shingles up on almost every street in America, IL JimP. Most of them are as incompetent as are our politicians, medical practitioners, economists and weathermen.

           You sound to me like so many other Americans, hyped into paranoia about freedom of speech by the wholly owned media of a financial establishment that wants to keep us quiet while they steal our lives away.

           Stand up, goddamnit!!!

           AG

         • 

           IL JimP on January 2, 2012 at 11:42 am

           you’re going to do whatever you want regardless of facts anyway so what’s the point

           keep stealing other people’s intellectual property at will, I’m sure it’s going to be fine

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 2, 2012 at 11:57 am

           I am “stealing” nothing. If I do not profit from it in some way, how is it stealing?

           I am sharing what I consider to be vital information about the state of the country with others. I link to the sites from which I have taken information…sites that are themselves free of charge. Where is the “theft?”

           Again…instead of simply plonking down empty ideas, please link to some sites that will actually back those ideas up.

           Or not, as you must.

           Thank you and good day.

           AG

       • 

         cruzy on December 31, 2011 at 11:20 pm

         I was going to read this, and then I realized that your constant Paul propaganda has made me utterly not care.

         A comment that size is a cry for help, not an entry to discussion.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 1, 2012 at 12:21 am

           Oh.

           Too much information.

           Is this Twitter?

           Sorry to stress your mind.

           Wake the fuck up.

           AG

         • 

           bazzz on January 1, 2012 at 3:03 pm

           Have you ever considered that when you woke up you were still in a dream and everyone had their eyes closed and refused to listen to your great insights?

           You seem to be stuck on a dream level, hope you get to the next one soon.

           Maybe after you wake up two or 3 times more you have arrived in actual reality.Or is it?

           Yusuf: Is this the dream? Or the dream within the dream?
           Dominic Cobb: I don’t know. Just keep shooting.

           http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/360419/a-dream-within-a-dream

           Think about it.

           Don`t get stuck man.

           Relax, its all a bad dream.

           Better get to bad reality.

           You wont feel better, but others will.

           Bet on it.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 2, 2012 at 4:34 am

           You actually quote South Park in a comment about dream, reality and awakening? Unmotherfuckingbelievable. Get real, bazzz. Too much TV time for you…since grade school, probably. Wake the fuck up and smell the napalm.

           AG

       • 

         LTMidnight on December 31, 2011 at 11:37 pm

         One of my New Years Resolution is to hope they find some treatment to whatever you seem to have.

         Dead serious here.

         In the meantime, I think what will help you is to realize there is no Moonbat Messiah that’s going to deliver America unto the “promise land”.  And Ron Paul sure as hell isn’t it.

         Whatever your mental affliction has got you thinking about Obama, Ron Paul is far worse.

         Believe it.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 1, 2012 at 12:24 am

           Treatment?

           For my own “affliction?” Independent intelligence and a lifelong refusal to kowtow to bullshit?

           They’ve had it for years.

           Death.

           I ain’t going easy, though.

           Bet on it.

           AG

         • 

           LTMidnight on January 1, 2012 at 1:47 am

           Here’s your hero for you.  This bill was introduced by Ron Paul in 2001:

           http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107hr3076ih/pdf/BILLS-107hr3076ih.pdf

           “…..The President of the United States is authorized to place a money bounty, drawn in his discretion from the $40,000,000,000 appropriated on September 14, 2001, in the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Re- covery from and Response to Terrorists Attacks on the United States or from private sources, for the capture, alive or dead, of Osama bin Laden or any other al Qaeda conspirator responsible for the act of air piracy upon the United States on September 11, 2001, under the authority of any letter of marque or reprisal issued under this Act…”

           We can only assume this would have included, among others, al-Qaeda member Anwar al-Awlaki, and who knows how many innocent victims would have been caught in the crossfire — or accidentally assassinated in Ron Paul’s plan.

           The moral bankruptcy of Libertarianism has never been more starkly on display. Paul reintroduced that bill in 2007. By the way, the only US Congressional Representative to vote against the Afghan war was Barbara Lee.  Paul voted for it.  Lee is black, female and a supporter of President Obama so she fails the moral purity test, I guess. Part of Paul’s appeal for the fake-left must be his steadfast commitment to making symbolic moral stands that don’t mean anything, but always voting with the GOP when needed – that and his convenient moral flexibility.

           Like I said, he’s not your messiah.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 1, 2012 at 4:05 am

           I am open to interesting and beievable oppositions to Ron Paul’s positions. This one looks good. Now that the mass media is not trying to make him a non-person, I am sure that this problem will soon be presented to him by the vast powers that presently oppose him. I will be very interested to see how he responds.

           Very interested indeed.

           Thank you…

           AG

         • 

           Oui on January 1, 2012 at 6:08 am

           .

           Ron Paul on “Letters of Marque and Reprisal”

           To avoid a war declaration on pirates or terrorists with no state affiliation. Video from 2007:

           Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and a growing number of national security experts are calling on Congress to consider using letters of marque and reprisal, a power written into the Constitution that allows the United States to hire private citizens to keep international waters safe.

           Used heavily during the Revolution, War of 1812 and Civil War, letters of marque serve as official warrants from the government, allowing privateers to seize or destroy enemies, their loot and their vessels in exchange for bounty money. The letters also require would-be thrill seekers to post a bond promising to abide by international rules of war.

           Introduced in the House on October 10, 2001: H.R.3076 — September 11 Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001 [This bill never became law]

           So this evolved into outsourcing the US Army and we got the likes of Blackwater/XE …
           • Let Privateers Troll for Bin Laden

           "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 1, 2012 at 9:04 am

           Thank you, Oui. Of the literally hundreds of things that I have read and heard from Ron Paul, this is one of the few that seems to me to be opposable on a common sense level, and that only in hindsight. The whole “contractor” thing got way out of hand during the Iraq War. Was that problem foreseeable when Paul proposed this bill? I dunno. I certainly distrust mercenaries much more than I do most members of the  American armed forces if only because they operate in an unenforceable grey area outside of the law. But then I distrust “the law” as it stands now because it has been thoroughly subverted by super-mercenary forces like international corporatism.

           I am actually at my wits’ end regarding the whole politico-economic situation. Maybe we are at an end point, truly defeated by forces even larger and more powerful than “The United States.” Could be…

           Is a puzzlement.

           When I hear Ron Paul refer to “Perot’s troops” on that video I get cold chills down my spine. What’s next? GE’s troops? Microsoft’s troops? Scary.

           AG

         • 

           Oui on January 1, 2012 at 9:39 am

           .

           Accused Perot Staffer Led ’79 Hostage Rescue

           Reza Saleh, Focus of $8.6 Million Insider-Trading Probe, Lived Quietly in Texas After Leaving Revolutionary Iran.

           (WSJ) Sept. 25, 2009 – The figure at the center of Wall Street’s latest insider-trading scandal also played a key role in another drama: the daring 1979 rescue of two American hostages held in Iran that was financed and orchestrated by H. Ross Perot.

           Reza Saleh, a longtime employee of Mr. Perot’s businesses who has lived quietly in Texas for 30 years, was accused by federal regulators Wednesday of making $8.6 million in illicit profits from Dell Inc.’s proposed purchase of Perot Systems Corp.

           But three decades ago, Mr. Saleh played a vital role in a bold mission to rescue two Perot employees who were being held hostage in an Iranian jail, according to people familiar with that effort. The rescue was the basis of the book “On Wings of Eagles,” by Ken Follett.

           Mr. Boulware said Mr. Saleh, an Iranian employee of Electronic Data Systems EDS at the time, led the mob that broke into the prison where the two EDS employees were being held, then helped shepherd them on a harrowing trip through Iran to escape over the Turkish border.

           "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on January 1, 2012 at 2:18 pm

           Yeah. Like dat. How convenient.

           A semi-private spook inside Iran “led”  a “mob” that broke into a prison and rescued two Americans. Then he retired…living OH so quietly somewhere in Texas, not doing much of anything except scamming about $9 million off of a stock sale. (And of course whatever other things he has done over 30 years about which no accusations have yet surfaced.)  

           Nice.

           Lemme see…what if a Cuban “led a mob” that rescued a couple of alleged-but-never-convicted-because-they-don’t-get-trials so-called terrorists out of Guantanamo, got them back to wherever they came from and then “retired” to some Islamic country and tried to live peacefully? HOO boy!!! One eye on the drone-filled skies and another on whoever was standing behind him every day of his life. Bet on it.

           This private thing is a slippery slope, ain’t it? Ya slips up towards great wealth if you’re on “our” side and ya slips down into the grave if you’re on “their” side. Yet another reason to avoid foreign entanglements of all sorts.

           Private or public.

           Yup.

           Trade with people and carry a big, big stick.

           Yup.

           The essence of what Ron Paul is saying.

           Bet on it.

           Later…

           AG

       • 

         Superpole on January 1, 2012 at 8:25 am

         Disturbing (because it’s accurate) and succinct summary of 2011 by Cockburn.

         Can’t wait to see what 2012 brings!

       • 

         Suranis on January 3, 2012 at 11:27 am

         Holy macrel. Ran goddam Paul is one flavour of the month right now because he’s not Mitt Romney and hes one of the few NOT ROMNEY candidates left. They’ve gone through every other goddam candidate before getting to him and even now they are surging to Rick Santorum. Paul is just getting a bounce as Santorum is almost as crazy as he is and the ABR crowd don’t know which to turn to.

         And you are celebrating becasue yoru candidate randomly is getting an ABR (anybody but Romney) boost. If he was such a brilliant candidate how come they didn’t gravitate to him first time? Hell they went to NEWT GINGRITCH before him!

         And the thing is once your goddamn candidate crashes and burns AGAIN, you will blame “all the forces against him,” rather than the fact that Paul, for all his likability and I like the guy as a person, is a crazy asswipe propped up by legions of fanatical followers such as you.

         Seriously, you need serious help. You used to be tiresome but now you are both vulgar and totally unreadable. Not to mention totally paranoid and so far up your high horse’s ass you are talking out its mouth

         Paul is going to crash and burn, either now or against Obama in the general. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that he could win the primaries due to the ABR effect, but if he does Obama will shred him. Paul has way too much self inflicted baggage going back 30 years to survive.

         Watch.

5. 

   shan on December 31, 2011 at 9:54 pm

   The first question at the next GOP debate should be….Where in the constitutions does is provide for the military detention of Americans on American soil?  I just can’t decide who they should ask first.

   • 

     TarheelDem on January 1, 2012 at 9:33 am

     You can ask political candidates of either party unscripted questions?  Is this new?

6. 

   Compound F on December 31, 2011 at 10:02 pm

   yer “kinda pissed?”

   Not that it matters what I think.  Greenwald and Bowers devoured the so-called liberals in this country.  And they left nothing for the dog.  Not a scrap.

   I suppose it’s time to quote Jon Chait, or whomever, on something.  Andrew Sullivan?  Maybe Big Tent has something circular that can be stuffed into the square hole.  I know, I know, I conflate way too many, one swell foop…

   Hunh.

   That’s the nature of bad judgment, sweep ’em up, things related and not.

   • 

     Compound F on December 31, 2011 at 10:18 pm

     I do wish you all a year of minimal pain, even happiness where it’s found; it seems as soon as one makes their splash, one’s job is to think about the arriving splashes, and we are well into that.

     Urgent wishes, all around.

     CF

7. 

   IL JimP on December 31, 2011 at 10:32 pm

   http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2011/12/get-your-heads-out-of-sand-about-ndaa.html#comment-form

8. 

   Arthur Gilroy on January 1, 2012 at 12:59 am

   to belatedly celebrate the recent New Year…

   I want to link to something I just found online, a wonderfully trenchant article by Glenn Greenwald in Salon..a decidedly liberal website/magazine….titled Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies.

   Man, does he pin it!

   I’ll write more tomorrow, but here is an excerpt.

   The Ron Paul candidacy, for so many reasons, spawns pervasive political confusion — both unintended and deliberate. Yesterday, The Nation`s long-time liberal publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, wrote this on Twitter:

   

   That’s fairly remarkable: here’s the Publisher of The Nation praising Ron Paul not on ancillary political topics but central ones (“ending preemptive wars & challenging bipartisan elite consensus” on foreign policy), and going even further and expressing general happiness that he’s in the presidential race. Despite this observation, Katrina vanden Heuvel — needless to say — does not support and will never vote for Ron Paul (indeed, in subsequent tweets, she condemned his newsletters as “despicable”). But the point that she’s making is important, if not too subtle for the with-us-or-against-us ethos that dominates the protracted presidential campaign: even though I don’t support him for President, Ron Paul is the only major candidate from either party advocating crucial views on vital issues that need to be heard, and so his candidacy generates important benefits.

   Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party — who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for whom most will vote — Barack Obama — advocates views on these issues (indeed, has taken action on these issues) that liberals and progressives have long claimed to find repellent, even evil.

   As Matt Stoller argued in a genuinely brilliant essay on the history of progressivism and the Democratic Party which I cannot recommend highly enough: “the anger [Paul] inspires comes not from his positions, but from the tensions that modern American liberals bear within their own worldview.” Ron Paul’s candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of America’s Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it’s one they do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their desired self-perception.

   The thing I loathe most about election season is reflected in the central fallacy that drives progressive discussion the minute “Ron Paul” is mentioned. As soon as his candidacy is discussed, progressives will reflexively point to a slew of positions he holds that are anathema to liberalism and odious in their own right and then say: how can you support someone who holds this awful, destructive position? The premise here — the game that’s being played — is that if you can identify some heinous views that a certain candidate holds, then it means they are beyond the pale, that no Decent Person should even consider praising any part of their candidacy.

   The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

   He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.

   Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal`s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.

   The simple fact is that progressives are supporting a candidate for President who has done all of that — things liberalism has long held to be pernicious. I know it’s annoying and miserable to hear. Progressives like to think of themselves as the faction that stands for peace, opposes wars, believes in due process and civil liberties, distrusts the military-industrial complex, supports candidates who are devoted to individual rights, transparency and economic equality. All of these facts — like the history laid out by Stoller in that essay — negate that desired self-perception. These facts demonstrate that the leader progressives have empowered and will empower again has worked in direct opposition to those values and engaged in conduct that is nothing short of horrific. So there is an eagerness to avoid hearing about them, to pretend they don’t exist. And there’s a corresponding hostility toward those who point them out, who insist that they not be ignored.

   The parallel reality — the undeniable fact — is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul: and among the major GOP candidates, only by Ron Paul. For that reason, Paul’s candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions and actions of their candidate, of the person they want to empower for another four years. If Paul were not in the race or were not receiving attention, none of these issues would receive any attention because all the other major GOP candidates either agree with Obama on these matters or hold even worse views.

   I’m not alone in my perceptions, folks.

   Check yourselves out, knee-jerk Paul haters, and ask yourselves this simple question.

   “If my knee is jerking, who is holding the reflex hammer?”

   Hmmmm…

   Please.

   And…wake the fuck up.

   The rest of the country seems to be doing so. Now it’s your turn.

   Bet on it.

   AG

9. 

   Hurria on January 1, 2012 at 3:24 am

   “Kind of pissed”? Really? “Kind of pissed” at yet another straight-on assault by Obama against civil rights in the “land of the free”?

   In less than three years Obama has managed to do more to undermine civil rights than Bush did in eight, and you are “kind of pissed”.

   Hope that Kool-Aid is tasty.

   • 

     joe from Lowell on January 2, 2012 at 10:34 am

     In less than three years Obama has managed to do more to undermine civil rights than Bush did in eight

     You mean by ending the use of military detention for terrorism suspects?

     Because in three years, Obama has not put a single terrorism suspect into military detention, ending the practice that Bush began.

     I love people who are so incredibly concerned about military detention that it doesn’t actually matter to them whether or not people are being put into military detention.

     • 

       Oui on January 2, 2012 at 11:09 am

       .
       US Drone strike statistics Bush vs. Obama years. [pdf]

       Saves the burden of transport, sorting into a category, bad PR, etc.  … don’t mention the Bagram secret.
       Obama’s Xmas gift for Pakistan followed by New Year tidings.

       "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

       • 

         joe from Lowell on January 2, 2012 at 12:51 pm

         Hey, look, movable goal posts!  I’ll take that as your acknowledgment that, yes, I’m correct, and Barack Obama actually has ended the practice of putting terrorism suspects into military detention.

         It’s very easy to tell who actually gives a crap about military detention and who does not: the people who do care manage to bestir themselves to acknowledge that it is a good thing that Obama has ended the practice.  Unlike you.

         Now, to boot the ball through your newly-installed goal posts: drone strikes are carried out in areas where our ground forces are not able to operate – places like the Pakistani tribal areas, or those in Yemen.  None of the people killed in these strikes would have been captured, because they aren’t available for capture.  The air strikes haven’t replaced military detention.  They’ve replaced doing nothing.

         • 

           Delonjo on January 3, 2012 at 10:54 am

           Blowing them up is much easier. So, yes, he has “ended the practice.” LOL

10. 

    sherifffruitfly on January 1, 2012 at 5:44 am

    You’re an idiot.

    Want a better law? THEN GET A BETTER CONGRESS.

    fuckin DURR.

    • 

      TarheelDem on January 1, 2012 at 9:38 am

      Was Carl Levin lying when he said that the President asked his committee to put the language in the bill?

      • 

        joe from Lowell on January 2, 2012 at 12:52 pm

        Carl Levin didn’t say that.

        You, and a lot of other people, got fooled by some James O’Keefe-style editing.

11. 

    Oui on January 1, 2012 at 6:27 am

    .

    Why Obama Will Not Veto NDAA Military Detention of Americans: He Requested It.

    Physicians for Human Rights Calls on President Obama to Veto NDAA Act

    Americans to Obama: Veto NDAA, White House phones jammed

    Four Star Generals Demand That Obama Veto/Repeal Anti-Constitutional NDAA Rule

    ACLU – NDAA’s detention authority violates international law

    Quite a change of heart from May 24, 2011 …

    Obama White House Threatens a Veto Over Worldwide War and Detention Provisions

    "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."