Friday, November 4, 2011

Can we make this any more clear?

Krugman on what exactly is wrong here:

"We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.”



Georgia Geriatric Militia and eliminationist ideology

(According to TPM):

"Thomas allegedly said that there “is no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly, highly illegal. Murder. That’s fucking illegal, but it’s gotta be done.”

“When it comes time to saving the Constitution, that means some people gotta die,” Thomas allegedly said.

“Let’s shoot the bastards that we discover are anti-American or enemies of America, treasonous,” Thomas allegedly said."

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Zombie Lies destroy real lives

According to a new survey from World Public Opinion:


"Support for the decision to go to war [in Iraq] is highly correlated with beliefs held by substantial and undiminishing minorities that Iraq was providing support to al Qaeda (46%) and either had a WMD program or actual WMDs (47%). Among those with such beliefs, large majorities say the war was the right thing while among those without such beliefs large majorities have the opposite views."


Truly amazing that despite having been repeatedly disproved with, you know, facts, a big chunk (almost half!) of the population unshakably believes in these zombie lies. And they’re willing to kill because of it. Thank you, Dick Cheney, for this gift that keeps on giving.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Obama’s “killing machine"

Apparently in these times of economic stagnation and public sector cutbacks, extrajudicial killing is a growth industry. The military, the CIA, and “contractors” are collaborating in a booming program of assassination.

Why don’t I feel safer living in Assassination Nation??

NYPD Mooslim Squad

Remember the good old days when lots of big city police departments had Red Squads to monitor and harass people whose left-wing politics were unpalatable for the City Fathers? It seems that political police are making a comeback. The NYPD has an ongoing operation targeting Muslim communities for special surveillance aimed at uncovering anti-American sentiments (you know, seditious stuff like criticism of US foreign policy, complaints about drones launching missiles into villages in Pakistan, planes bombing villages in Afghanistan, shit like that). This operation ranges well beyond the department’s official jurisdiction of New York City. This domestic spying program, based on ethnic-religious profiling of the crudest sort - has been created in partnership with the CIA, which is legally prohibited from, um, domestic spying. And it looks like AP has exposed the NYPD’s denials as lies.

According to Salon, “both federal and local law enforcement agencies have developed sophisticated and far-reaching intelligence-collection operations to gather data about America's minority communities, and other groups, regardless of whether there is any reason to suspect criminal or terrorist activity."



Saturday, August 27, 2011

Islamophobia, Inc.

A new report from the Center for American Progress highlights the funders and snake-oil charlatans behind the fear industry targeting Muslims in America.


Friday, August 19, 2011

No such thing as Class warfare in America





Fox is working extra hard to persuade Americans that “class” is a demagogic idea dreamed up by Democrats. Jon Stewart isn’t buying.

More here. And here. And here.

Why Bachman and Perry are SCARY: Christian Dominionism

Everything would be ok if we could just stone unruly children and gays, and evil-doers, and people who swear. And feminists. And atheists. And liberals. And did we stone the gays yet?



That people would seek refuge in absolute certainty guaranteed by an omnipotent creator is not surprising in a time when things we once took for granted appear to be coming apart at the seams and answers of any kind are elusive. But that doesn’t make these folks and their Taliban-like political project any less frightening. On the contrary.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Cultural Marxists are destroying Christianity & taking over America

But don’t take my word for it. Watch the movie. Or, if you’re one of those intellectual elitists who just has to read things before you can take them seriously, take a look at this. And here is the “brilliant conservative thinker” who is credited with this insight. So join Anders Breivik and kill a commie for Christ.





For more on the American ideological roots of Anders Breivik’s murderous fantasies, see this post by Chip Berlet and this one by David Neiwert.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Brief talk on academic repression



I spoke at LeMoyne College as part of an event announcing the publication of our book entitled Academic Repression.

Thursday, January 13, 2011


Tragically, even in America there are psychopaths who don't yet have firearms. If you have more guns than you use, share one with a raving lunatic near you. Your gesture of human kindness could make all the difference in someone's life.

Brought to you by the NRC and the NRA

Thursday, March 5, 2009

We were closer than we knew

International Herald Tribune:
The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation's military within the United States to combat people deemed as terrorists and to conduct raids without obtaining a search warrant.

That opinion was among nine that were disclosed publicly for the first time Monday by the Justice Department, in what the Obama administration portrayed as a step toward greater transparency. The opinions showed a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, deal with detainees suspected of terrorism while rejecting input from Congress and conduct a warrantless eavesdropping program.

...

Yoo and Delahunty also said in the Oct. 23 memorandum that "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully." They added that the "current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."

Yoo said the Posse Comitatus Act, a statute first enacted in 1878 and since renewed, would also not present an obstacle to the use of the armed forces. The Posse Comitatus Act generally forbids the use of military forces in domestic law enforcement.

Yoo and Delahunty asserted that the act's prohibition against use of the military was only for law enforcement functions and that using soldiers against terrorist suspects would be a national security function.





Marjorie Cohn:

Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide “legal” rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.


Naomi Wolf:
the groundwork was laid out that gave the president the legal power effectively subvert the Republic.


Memos online at DOJ here:

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Bush & News Media Rewrite History Before our Eyes

TPM:

Big News Orgs Help Bush Whitewash History Of Iraq War

By Greg Sargent - December 2, 2008, 10:02AM
This really isn't complicated. President Bush was not being "blunt" or showing "candor" when he told ABC News in an interview published yesterday that his biggest regret was the failure of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Rather, he was whitewashing away his own role in the fisaco by promoting the demonstrable falsehood that there was no available evidence or information that argued against war and that he was merely fooled into invading Iraq solely by the bad intel.

The big news orgs seem eager to help Bush do this. Not a single one of their reports on the interview that we can find bothered to tell readers that there was plenty of good intel -- ignored by the Bush administration -- saying that Saddam wasn't the threat Bush was claiming he was. Nor did any of them bother mentioning that the weapons inspectors in Iraq were saying the same thing -- something that also went ignored.

These facts are absolutely central to understanding Bush's efforts to falsify history in yesterday's interview. Yet they went unmentioned in reports by Reuters, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN, and The New York Times.

Worse, at least one news org pretended that Bush was making some kind of admission or concession here. WaPo hailed Bush's "candor" and said he was being "unusually blunt."

Let's go over this very slowly. For Bush to blame the failure of intel for his decision to invade is not a concession at all, and it is not an admission of failure on his part. Rather, it is the opposite of these things. It is an evasion of responsibility for what happened.

Yet the big news orgs seem unable -- or unwilling -- to grasp this simple dynamic or give readers the info they need to understand it, and for some reason are perfectly willing to enable Bush's falsification of history.


Much like the idea that Vietnam was a "mistake" (oops), this will join the ranks of Americans' collective self-deceptions about our imperial history.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Historical fun facts

Even Hitler thought Franco was a dick. After their meeting in 1940, Hitler said he'd rather have several teeth pulled than ever have to spend any more time with Franco.

When the Furhrer decides you're too much of an asshole to ever want to see again, it's time to reassess. Unfortunately, the Generalissimo appears not to have been sufficiently sensitive to have taken the hint.

End of the "Monster years"?

Krugman reflects on the election:

Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.
What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.
And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”
Four years ago it seemed as if the monsters would dominate American politics for a long time to come. But for now, at least, they’ve been banished to the wilderness.


Unfortunately for us, there are 56 million voters out there ready to welcome the monsters into their homes and keep them alive until the next election cycle. Our monsters aren't going away anytime soon.


hat tip: Crooks and Liars

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

WTF are those people thinking?

Let's recap:

The Republicans have spent the bulk of the last 30 years aggressively redistributing income upwards in favor of the very rich few, deregulating the economy and especially the now precarious financial sector, and putting the country on the brink of an economic crisis of historic proportions. They misled us into a disastrous and unnecessary war of aggression, instituted policies of what amounts to extrajudicial abduction and torture, seriously threatened fundamental freedoms like habeas corpus, and engaged in wholesale warrentless wiretapping. And they ran a transparently fraudulant and mean-spirited campaign which included race-baiting and red-baiting and religion-baiting directly attributable to the campaign and the party apparatus.

All of that and more, and they still get 56 million votes.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Small celebrations of democracy

6:20 this morning, PAF voted for Obama.

More people than I expected at the polling place that early in the morning, many of them visibly happy about voting in this election. One woman ahead of me had her son in the booth with her and emerged grinning at me. She said nothing, but it was clear as day: she was so pleased to give her son the gift of a piece of history by sharing her vote with him.

This is not the rapture and we're not saved.

But it is a sweet moment for a whole bunch of good reasons, and it was great to see fellow citizens so obviously enjoying that feeling.