Even Jon Stewart Noticed

And not surprisingly, he has something to say about it.  Video.

Did the U.S. Turn Guantanamo Over to Kafka When We Weren't Looking?

What is wrong with the United States of America, that we hold and torture innocent people?

The case of Shaker Aamer, a/k/a why Americans should not bring up gulags or concentration camps any more.

Maybe a Simulacrum

Intrigue and faction:

It was reported on Thursday that Manning had been chosen by the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee as one of several grand marshals for the June 29-30 event, something San Francisco Pride Board President Lisa Williams said in a statement Friday was a "mistake and never should have happened."

So that's debunked.

Comrade Misfit also noticed the rush to lift sequestration from air travel, so the furloughed air traffic controllers can get back to work and Congresspeople don't get inconvenienced when they fly home.

They Act Quickly Enough When They're Inconvenienced...

House debates bill to end airport delays due to air traffic controllers being furloughed because of the sequestration.  Apparently even Republicans can figure cause and effect.

Everyone Panic At Once!

DRUGS HAVE BEEN FOUND ON JUSTIN BIEBER'S TOUR BUS!

And now that you're properly anxious...

• Bush Presidential Library opens.  Calls for indictment made.  (It's too late.  Talk to Suetonius over there.)  From Mills River Progressive.

  You lied, manipulated/manufactured "evidence", tortured, killed, and borrowed money this country didn't have to pay for your plundering. You used 9/11, which happened on your watch, to justify invading a country that had nothing to do with it. And that's aside from your probable foreknowledge (at the least) of the event. Then you and your freakshow cohorts in Congress used the same 9/11 to gut American civil liberties. Permanently. Because after all, the "war on terra" goes on forever and ever, doesn't it? At least as long as it's profitable for the MIC and pleasing to Israel, anyway.

• Different weird billionaire brothers, who have to do with drones.  Their names are not Jake or Elwood, either.  (Reprinted Reposted at AlterNet from Not Safe For Work Corporation.)
• Robert Reich two-minute video on Chained CPI and why it's bad for seniors.  Reposted at AlterNet from Robert Reich's Blog.
• Some more about the Nestlé CEO who wants to privatize water.

  Peter Brabeck, who it should be noted, also sits on the boards of Exxon, L’Oréal, and the banking giant Credit Suisse, warned in 2009 that the global economic crisis would be “very deep” and that, “this crisis will go on for a long period.” On top of that, the food crisis would be “getting worse” over time, hitting poor people the hardest. However, propping up the financial sector through massive bailouts was, in his view,“absolutely essential.” But not to worry, as banks are bailed out by governments, who hand the bill to the population, which pays for the crisis through reduced standards of living and exploitation (which we call “austerity” and “structural reform” measures), Nestlé has been ableto adapt to a new market of impoverished people, selling cheaper products to more people who now have less money. And better yet, it’s been making massive profits. And remember, according to Brabeck, isn’t that all that really matters?
  
  This is the world according to corporations. Unfortunately, while it creates enormous wealth, it is also leading to the inevitable extinction of our species, and possibly all life on earth. But that’s not a concern of corporations, so it doesn’t concern those who run corporations, who make the important decisions, and pressure and purchase our politicians.

  Andrew Gavin Marshall, posted at AlterNet.
• Excerpt from book talking about revolution and economic systems.

As Long as You're Up...

• The ten hardest drugs to kick and why.  (They don't count cheap sentimental movies.  Huh.)
• Arthur Silber:

  A closely related but separate issue demands attention here. That is: the idealization of authority. I've written extensively about how we are all taught as young children about the crucial importance of obedience to authority. The idealization of authority is a critical element of such training, but it is a subject requiring discussion on its own. The mechanism of idealization of authority will help to explain two issues of special relevance to the Boston horror show: why so many people tend to analyze authorities' actions in fundamentally the wrong way (the subject I indicated at the very end of the previous post), a subject which also requires explanation of why most people believe that the authorities' goals are what they publicly proclaim them to be (they're not); and why the majority of people erroneously attribute superior levels of competence to authority figures (whether they be individuals or institutions, including the police and the military).

• Via Making Light:  "Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck says that with the global population rising water is not a public right, but a resource that should be managed by businessmen."  Video with subtitles.  (Thanks, guys, I post my own links.)
• The sequester bites back.

Chomp

Natural scientist dismantles the libertarian positions:  "Why I am not a Libertarian."

I'm just going to quote one sentence as an appetizer. You should read the rest:

Just the other day I was wondering where I could buy adulterated food and some appliances with dangerous wiring.

Via devilc at Dreamwidth. Who has other links to this writer. Heh.

The Evil That Men Do, or The Past Is Not Dead, It's Not Even Past

• Trial halted.
  

  Guatemala is a respected ally of the U.S. today–a paragon of “democracy.” Even though the president can shut down a trial because he doesn’t like what is being said about him. The Constitutional Court will rule within ten days on whether the trial will proceed.

  From Mercury Rising.
• But of course that is of a piece with the lack of a trial for this person.

  No, what Mr. Kissinger will be most remembered for is cold-bloodedly ushering in a new age of undemocratic, unconstitutional, secret, criminal and amoral automated warfare, by a U.S. Executive Branch constrained neither by law nor elemental human decency.

• Which illuminates the incident of the bad data and austerity anyway.  Do I have to maunder on about scientific integrity?  The corrected data does not support your conclusion!
• "Follow those who pale in your shadow."  --"Gold Dust Woman," S. Nicks

With the Yancy Street Gang

• Daisy Deadhead's Texas correspondent Yellowdog Granny's first-hand account of the explosion in West, Texas.  Empathic follow-up.
• Rolf Harris?  Rolf Harris?
• Republic of T:

  In West, Texas ammonium nitrate combined with conservative disdain for government, yielded devastating results. If sequestration continues, we can expect to see more of the same.

  [...]

  Conservatives disdain government, and when they’re in power they push for deregulation and less funding, and shrink these agencies until they’re ineffective. In other words, Republicans tell American’s government doesn’t work, when they really believe it shouldn’t work, and then they get elected and make damn sure that it can’t work.
  Anti-government conservatism turned West, Texas, into a kind of Randian paradise, and with a little ammonium nitrate, it helped turn the small town into a deadly inferno.

  (Article referenced.)
  
• Jurassicpork on his particular bit of fallout from the Boston Marathon bombings.

Mmmm-Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

• Relayed by Zandar Versus The Stupid via Driftglass, ex-Gov. Mark Sanford was sneaking around his ex-wife's house.
• I did not report on about Rand Paul speaking at Howard University because Sitting Duck, but
  1. Ta-Nehisi Coates did, in two parts:  "The Journey to Mecca" and "The Limits of Good Faith."  
  2. Zandar of Zandar Versus The Stupid explains (with examples) why Rand Paul is unsatisfactory
  3.  Doghouse Riley of Bats Left, Throws Right (not a baseball blog.  When will I remember that?), in eviscerating a Salon piece, put up the very best headline:  "White Guy Gives Tap Dancing Lessons To Audience Familiar With The Nicholas Brothers."
  Libertarians. Ha!
  
• The Boston Marathon bombings:  My heart and prayers go out to the injured and dead and their loved ones.

Loose Change

• Via skippy, via The Reaction:  Frankly Curious' Frank Moraes calls for Real Liberals.

  We've lived through 20 years during which the Democratic Party has been nothing more than Republican Lite. Not only is that completely at odds with what most liberals want, it is a losing strategy. The Republicans were still winning in 2009 when Democrats controlled the executive and legislative branches of government because the terms of the debate were still conservative. Note that even with overwhelming control of both houses, we couldn't even discuss single payer healthcare. The Republicans won before the debate started.

  Many people on the Net have been saying that for years.
  
• Jurassicpork is doing a comic strip at Welcome Back to Pottersville.  That I just closed without getting the URL.  *facepalm*  It's the second in the series.

In Memoriam

Jonathan Winters, comic.
ETA:  Maria Tallchief, ballerina.

Coda

Riverbend.

We are learning that ignorance is the death of civilized societies and that everyone thinks their particular form of fanaticism is acceptable.

We are learning how easy it is to manipulate populations with their own prejudices and that politics and religion never mix, even if a super-power says they should mix.

But it wasn’t all a bad education…

We learned that you sometimes receive kindness when you least expect it. We learned that people often step outside of the stereotypes we build for them and surprise us. We learned and continue to learn that there is strength in numbers and that Iraqis are not easy to oppress. It is a matter of time…

And then there are things we'd like to learn...

Ahmed Chalabi, Iyad Allawi, Ibrahim Jaafari, Tarek Al Hashemi and the rest of the vultures, where are they now? Have they crawled back under their rocks in countries like the USA, the UK, etc.? Where will Maliki be in a year or two? Will he return to Iran or take the millions he made off of killing Iraqis and then seek asylum in some European country? Far away from the angry Iraqi masses…

What about George Bush, Condi, Wolfowitz, and Powell? Will they ever be held accountable for the devastation and the death they wrought in Iraq? Saddam was held accountable for 300,000 Iraqis... Surely someone should be held accountable for the million or so?

She and her family got out of Syria, by the way.

Via abi's Parhelia at Making Light.

More Revelations

Wikileaks' Latest Release, from The Dissenter at Firedoglake.  Marked as "The Kissinger Cables."  Wikileaks direct link.

Feet, legs, hips, and torsos of clay.  Because it's sausage all the way down.

Are We Going to Have to Come to Washington and Starve in Front of the White House Before You Listen to Us?

Lynn Parramore at AlterNet:  7 Chilling Facts About Retirement.

While we’re on the subject, it may interest you to know that the President will receive a pension that will start at around 200k per year after his second term, and it will go up from there. That’s just the beginning – other perks include travel, office expenses, and so on. And yet he is preparing to make it more difficult for those Americans without pensions to survive. Something wrong with this picture?

3. The 401(k) catastrophe: It’s high time to face it: the 401(k) experiment, which started in the 80s, has been a complete disaster. 401(k)s don’t even come close to providing the retirement security promised to workers. To expect Americans to morph into finance experts who can evaluate mutual funds and stockmarket choices may be one of the most absurd legacies of the last three decades. And, as Helaine Olen outlines in her book Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry, people trying to save for retirement have become a prime target of hustlers who push mutual funds with hidden fees and needless charges which pile up and rob the contributor of hard-earned money.

And lest we forget, Enron, like many other companies, put strong pressure on employees to invest in the company’s stock. Result? Many employees lost most of their life savings when the company blocked workers from selling its stock held in 401(k) accounts, just as the stock price was taking a downward plunge.

401(k)s are volatile, complicated, expensive, and inadequate. Social Security, on the other hand, is simple, fiscallly sound, and prudently managed.

Let me repeat: If one survives, one gets old.  And no one is interested in the Ice Floe Retirement System.  We don't need a back-door Romney.

[Edited]

I have nothing good to say about Thatcher's politics or policies.  I was not even going to mention her name here.  Melissa McEwan at Shakesville has a good overview of her deeds.  Condolences to her family.

I thought Meryl Streep did a really good job.

That is all.

And More Again

Via Jurassicpork (who has been intermittently using his actual name lately), a Salon article on how "conservatives" still run America, despite having been thrashed at the polls.  It's that bipartisan swill again.

Social security and gun safety are but a couple of the numerous issues on which conservatives in Washington get their way and the minority liberal party loses out. Most recently, every Republican and 33 Democratic conservatives came together to repeal a tax on medical devices, a major source of funding for Obamacare. And on Dec 28, the conservative party — 42 Republicans, 30 Democrats and 1 Independent senator — voted to extend the foreign intelligence law known as FISA, opposed by civil libertarians. We should further expect that the conservative party will keep winning on many fronts, from greatly limiting all new investments in education to unduly slashing social spending.

"Plutocracy" Doesn't Mean We Are Ruled by a Disney Dog

The billionaires are in charge, and they're coming to get you.

Morgan officials stated baldly that they chose not to inform the Controller of the Currency about discrepancies in trading accounts, without the slightest regard that they might be breaking the law, in the conviction that it was Morgan’s privilege not to do so. Senior regulators explained that they did not see it as their job to monitor compliance or to check whether claims made by their Morgan counterparts were correct. They also accepted abusive treatment, e.g. being called “stupid” to their face by senior Morgan executives. That’s plutocracy at work. The Senate Finance Committee hearing drew only 3 senators – yet another sign of plutocracy at work. When mega-banks make illicit profits by money laundering for drug cartels and get off with a slap on the wrist, as has HSBC and others, that too is plutocracy.

From CounterPunch's Michael Brenner via AlterNet.

The part of socialism that absolutely made sense was distrusting the rich, but that got thrown out with the dismantling of communism at the end of the last century.  Bathwater, you know.

In Memoriam

Carmine Infantino, comics artist and publisher (both links are to Mark Evanier).

Yes, it's intentional.

Great Green Globs of Grimy Greasy Gopher Guts

• First and foremost, if state bonds are being advertised on the radio in a "pre-sale" ahead of "the big institutions," wouldn't you think something was, how you say, smoky?
• Thirty-two trillion dollars in offshore tax havens?  (Via Mercury Rising.)
• Continued atomization:

  As human beings, when we feel distant and unrelated to one another—through a lack of belonging, caring, familiarity or interrelationship—our normal capacity to function breaks down, we become psychologically, emotionally, and cognitively distressed. When our interpersonal needs are chronically unmet, we become upset, angry, and depressed. We act out against a world that has not provided what we need—either expressing our anger and discontent at this world that does not appear to care for us, or suffering our disconnection from others in near-suicidal silence and alienation.

  (Xander Stone Ink, via AlterNet)
  
• The Never-ending Story, military style:

  Yes, Republicans. Do tell me how we can’t possibly cut the Pentagon budget without “endangering the homeland.” I’m all ears. And while you’re at it, remind me how food stamps and Head Start are budget-busters but the Pentagon ordering hundreds of millions of dollars of parts it can’t even use is not.

  Southern Beale strikes again!
  
• The school prayer thing.  Apparently they don't give enough tests.  Daisy's Dead Air:

  Nobody said they couldn't PRAY, they just have to be NONSECTARIAN prayers. But to some Christians, unless it is Christian prayer, it doesn't even count as prayer. It is rendered utterly invisible. (Or maybe they are illiterate and really do not understand the difference?)

  It's not the prayer; it's the pray-er.
• What are you doing here?  It's Friday!

(We Interrupt This Blog For Unhappy News)

Roger Ebert has died.

Mutilated (or Masticated) Monkey Meat

• The Everhart laughing stock show continues to roll, now with Stephen Colbert.  Video included.
• s.e. smith at Tiger Beatdown on what is apparently NPR's willful misunderstanding of disability.

  This is the state of disability journalism in the US. Harmful, error-riddled stories that propagate false mythologies about disability, don’t acknowledge the complexity of disability, fail to account for the multitude of factors involved, and don’t consult a single disability expert. This is lazy, bad journalism and I would expect better of a national-level organisation that happens to be highly renowned for the quality, breadth, and detail of its coverage. The fact that right-wing media are jumping on this report and heaping it with praise is an indicator of how skewed and dangerous it is: it provides an ideal argument for dismantling the social safety net, and no actual information about disability in the United States and the health and disability crisis that is gripping this country.

• In memoriam:  Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, screenwriter and novelist (the Jhabvala in Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala).
• Roger Ebert's cancer has recurred, and Iain Banks has been diagnosed with terminal gall bladder cancer.

Little Dirty Birdy Feet

Opening Night was marvelous, even though the home team lost.

Great! Green! Globs! of Grimy Greasy Gopher Guts

Terrance of Republic of T presents 7 arguments against same-sex marriage (yes, it's April Fool's Day).  And these are the ones that don't involve religion directly.

That's What We Had To Eat...Without a Spoon

Two samples of the same thing, really:

• Another Republican confused by same-sex marriage:

  LOL. Yes, it’s always, always all about the free ride with Republicans, isn’t it? Hilarious.
  
  I just have one question: say you’re a straight person wanting a “free ride” — maybe it’s getting on someone’s health insurance. Why would a straight person marry someone of the same sex to get that free ride? Why wouldn’t they just marry someone of the opposite sex? I mean, I’m sure that’s happened. We’ve all heard of green card marriages and whatnot. It’s not like straight people didn’t invent the marriage of convenience a thousand years ago.
  
  So, that made no sense to me. Also, this:
  

  Everhart said if she had a young child, she wouldn’t want them to have gay parents who would influence that child’s sexual orientation.

  You know, there’s this amazing fun fact that Sue Everhart needs to consider: the vast majority of gay people had straight parents! I know, totally weird, huh?

• The authoritarian imperative:

  This is a recurring trait among authoritarians (looked at in most detail previously here) – they truly believe that they should be able to control other people's lives and make decisions that are none of their damn business.
  This attitude isn't limited to far-right social conservatives, however. Mitt Romney's campaign remarks about 47% of Americans being 'takers' focused more on economic/fiscal issues (also the idea of a social contract), but weren't that different. Like Fagan, Romney's accusations are grossly counterfactual, and like Fagan, there's a mean streak there – a sense of entitlement, and resentment, and a desire to punish his less-fortunate fellow Americans (certainly if one looked at his budget plan).

  [Warning for some ableist language.]

It's control-freaks vs. non-control-freaks, and that never ends well, even with non-control-freaks' numerical superiority.  On the other hand, non-control-freaks are liquid and slither and dribble and otherwise ooze out.  Non-control-freaks win in the long run.  Which makes control-freaks...very unhappy.

Nota Bene

I have a box of salt right here.