Seriously Creepy

Well no, actually THIS is way beyond seriously creepy.

What Do You Wish the Candidates Would Talk About?

HERE is what i wish Obama would steer the conversation to in tonight's debate. Silly me, assuming the conversation between our two potential Commanders-in-Chief is steerable:

"And after 9/11, in the wake of this massive failure, they started sweeping up everything. Everything in the entire world. They are recording everything, building a giant facility in Texas the size of the Alamodome to store all the data. The warrantless eavesdropping was authorized at the very top be Justice Department legal opinions so secret that the NSA's OWN LAWYERS were not allowed to look at them. They are getting this information by setting up big rooms at telecommunications facilities to tap the major switchers of the top companies (they have outsourced the tapping to a group of tiny companies, many from Israel), and they even built a large submarine to directly feed into the undersea cables which house overseas communications.

It is an unbelievable and infuriating story. What I am writing right now, what all of you are writing, every word you say on the phone, every text message, every email - the government has it. Locked up in a room in Texas. And the legality is so murky that it's basically indemnified.

An Obama Administration faces challenges in the economy at home and with failing occupations abroad. But there's the very real question of whether there's a functioning Constitution to begin with. If the government can sweep up the communications of every man, woman and child on the planet, if the government can sign off on torture and indefinite detention, and if the Congress can essentially indemnify the government for doing so, what is this state that Obama would inherit?

If this isn't discussed openly before the election, it becomes that much harder to actually reverse these policies, which have been growing through inertia for at least six years, if not longer, and which Congress has basically rubber-stamped. Obama has agreed to look at every executive order and throw out the ones that are unconstitutional. That is not a specific enough answer. Signals intelligence and the NSA needs to be addressed. Torture and rendition need to be addressed. We practically don't have a country to lead anymore, or at least one worth leading. The Constitution, the founding document, has become a non-issue in this election or really any election. No President has tarnished it as much as this one, and yet we continue on, muddling through, talking about tax cuts or who has the more comfortable demeanor. This election may repudiate conservatism but it's necessary to define terms. Is it a rollback of torture? A rollback of the surveillance state? A rollback of official secrecy and lost civil liberties? I don't think we know. And I think we need to have that conversation out in the open.

Are we ever going to talk about our loss of honor as a nation?"

What do YOU wish the Candidates would talk about in tonight's final debate? Tell me by leaving a comment.

What Our Economy Needs

I've been reading about the Senate's version of the bailout, which i guess is going to be voted upon today. One GOOD PIECE, by DDAY over at Hullabaloo, makes a great case for how out of whack our economy is. Unless we have a balanced economy, with a healthy manufacturing sector to counteract the paper-pushing sector, we will remain out of whack, as DDAY notes in his criticism of the bill up today in the Senate:

"As for the "progressive alternative" from Rep. DeFazio, it doesn't read to me as much of an alternative at all. The good part of it, raising the FDIC insurance limit, is in the Senate plan now, and the rest of it seems to just be a new way to give away money. The change away from mark-to-market accounting, which has the potential to be hideous as companies make up numbers and the entire financial services industry becomes Enronized, is a fait accompli thanks to the SEC. David Sirota seems to like it, but I fail to see how it would do anything to stop foreclosures or alleviate the housing crisis. It may, I repeat may, save money on the initial layout, as there's no price tag attached. If it's administered the way that they fixed the S&L's, it could be cheap. But it doesn't even begin to try and solve the problem.

The problem, folks, is that the largest sector of the private economy is financial services, in other words people pushing paper to other people, while manufacturing is at its lowest level in decades. That is historically unsustainable and impossible, and invites crises like this, and no amount of figuring out a creative accounting fix and some kind of bailout on the cheap is going to change that. Only by creating a new energy economy, allowing for 5 million new green-collar jobs, and building a manufacturing base again to match the knowledge economy will we ever have an economic system in any kind of balance. Yet only the Senate bribery bill even brooches that subject."

Anyhow, i agree with DDAY that we ought to pass a stopgap that stops the hemorrhaging, but waits for a real fix until after the election and a new President and a new Congress can take it up. We've got to stop being the world's military force (DDAY calls us GLOBOCOP which is perfect), we've got to solve our energy dilemma, and we have got to stop allowing our financial sector to continue to kill the manufacturing sector.

Newsclipping of the Day :: The Coming Security & Surveillance State

Canadian investigative journalist Naomi Klein--of No Logo and Disaster Capitalism fame--wrote a REALLY SCARY PIECE about all kinds of developments in harnessing the power of technology to spy on us all. It appeared 3 months ago now, in the Rolling Stone. And it is a whopper.

When the revolution comes, these simple tools will be used to stop it in its nascent state. Before guns and bombs and barricades and guillotines are even taken up.

It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than This!

THIS is better than any drama from The West Wing. I sincerely hope that Obama is, indeed, already on a course to take Olbermann's advice. Be sure to stick around for the second second chance portion of the program.

Newsclipping of the Day :: War with Iran??

Here's another little tidbit Congress has been working on:

"Over the last four weeks 102 House Democrats and 117 Republicans have agreed to cosponsor a new resolution against Iran that demands that President Bush “initiate an international effort” to impose a land, sea, and air blockade on Iran to prevent it from importing gasoline and to inspect all cargo entering or leaving Iran."

Unbelievable. I've read and heard alot recently about how we have enough hardware amassed all around Iran to start a full-scale war within hours. People get a clue!! Don't let the warmongers get their way again! We can not constantly start wars around the world for no good reason! Has the entire city of Washington gone nuts??

Here is a link to the Just Foreign Policy PAC and a link to find out what you can do to oppose the madness.

Have any of you read Seymour Hersh's latest that is in this week's New Yorker? I have not yet, but we heard him being interviewed about it by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air, while driving around the hills of the Laurel Highlands in SW Pennsylvania Monday. DDAY over at Hullabaloo has a GREAT PIECE on the whole horrible affair, and some interesting background. Especially a quote from Dick Cheney advising that Hersch's apartment be raided and his research siezed (from 1975 though, not now. Now he makes sure no one quotes him.) . . .

Preach It, Brother Bill

We need more citizens like Bill Moyers.

Newsclipping of the Day :: Our Facade of Democracy, Part II

Well, it looks like something is actually happening with the massive Pentagon program to plant happy smiling pro-war cheerleaders as far as the eye can see. Unbelievably, overwhelmingly--by a margin of 384 to 23--the U.S. House of Representatives last Thursday voted an amendment to the latest bill to fund another big chunk of Bush's Phony War that includes a provision to force the GAO to investigate the hundreds upon hundreds of fake false phony idiotic planted positive news stories about the war, by Penatagon-paid propagandists. I haven't heard about it for lo these 4 or 5 days now because there has been nada, nothing, nien, ZILCH about it in the news or in newspapers. I didn't read the NYTimes this weekend, but i bet there was nothing there about the bill. If any of you know otherwise, please let me know.

HEREis the story from Josh Silver writing at the Huffington Post, with some significant links to a few other stories about the bill.

Of course, Bush is threatening to veto (Senate version not ready yet apparently), but a margin like this--as it should be--is beyond veto-proof.

I am so glad this issue is getting traction, however slowly. I suppose the mainstream outlets, given their complicity in the propaganda, will obfuscate, bury and cover up till the end, and may never actually cover the story. That is fine, they are no longer needed.

It is depressing to me how the entire apparatus of big media can be so under the control of an Executive. Are they private companies? What, exactly, does that mean anymore? How can the the actual facts be so manipulated? How can Americans be so incredibly deep in denial that they don't see what has happened in front of their eyes?

Steven is yelling from the other room that Sharon Stone is quoted in numerous Chinese News sites as saying that the recent tragic earthquakes in Sichuan were "karma." No doubt she has drunk the Hollywood Kool Aid too, and believes China has been unfair to Tibet, and commits human rights abuses. As if we are even qualified to discuss such matters after Warrantless Wiretapping, the Patriot Act, Abu Graib, and Guantanamo Bay. Amazing the people who open their mouths. Wonder if she is getting some Pentagon Payola too?

Message to the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower: it has happened. Help.

Our Facade of Democracy

Arianna Huffington has nailed THIS STORY. Our mainstream media totally enforces blackout on stories--however huge--of its choosing. Our media is more supple and compliant with the forces of power than Mussolini's was. The time is SO ripe for new media to supplant these dinosaurs who've ensured their own calcification, irrelevance, and demise. Rest assured, when Obama or Clinton becomes our next President, this switch will work only in the OTHER direction, our mainstream media only making up negative press out of thin air for Democrats. We are all going to have to stop subscribing to the CNNs and MSNBCs and FOX news of the cable/satellite ether--en masse--to make a difference. That's another thing that has been squashed by the Big Business machine here: bill proposals that would allow us to choose each and every channel we would like to receive, support, and pay for.

Issue of the Day :: How Do You Want Your Tax Dollars Spent?

Do you want MORE THAN HALF to go to war and killing people who have oil we want? This is sickening. And the dishonest methods of showing how the pies each year are divied up is a scandal of huge, immoral proportions.

A Fun Little Tool!

Make the USA's budget priorities be what YOU think they should be! I for one have lost patience with more than half of my tax dollars going to fund killing and imperialism.