Some things to consider...

After yesterday's detention hearing for the guy who assaulted me -- our neighbor calls him Ben but that's not the name he's being held under -- I thought much more about what happened, who those of us involved are, and what may be the larger meanings of it all, or if there are any.

One thing that instantly popped out was the absence of police brutality. The officer who arrested "Ben" or whatever his name is arrived within five minutes of my call. I saw him in the front courtyard of the house across the street apparently idly chatting with "Ben" who appeared to be sitting calmly on a bench shortly after his arrest. 

At the hearing yesterday, the officer stated that he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest. He didn't say what for, but I assume it was the joyride "Ben" took in the police chief's car in April. 

He described the most recent arrest this way: he saw my wife in the street and asked her where the suspect was. She pointed to the house across the street from ours. He got his automatic rifle and went to the front door and... knocked. "Ben" opened the door. The officer said he saw two knives, one in each pocket of "Ben's" jeans and that "Ben's" left hand was concealed behind the door. He ordered him out of the house and onto the ground. "Ben" did not immediately obey, but was somehow persuaded -- without violence -- out of the house and onto one knee in the front courtyard. The officer handcuffed him and relieved him of three weapons, the two knives in his pants pockets and the hatchet/tomahawk he'd assaulted me with.

And then they waited for backup. "Ben" sat on the bench; the officer stood beside him. The officer said that, yes, he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest.

During the hearing, an extensive arrest record was mentioned as well as sentencing to prison and probation for previous offenses. "Ben" is no stranger to The System.

He is, however, arguably severely mentally ill. While he rattled off a litany of diagnoses, it comes down to paranoid schizophrenia and addiction with violent tendencies. They are only partially controlled by medications and counseling. And in this case were not controlled.

I had this grand notion of how I would want him to be treated post-conviction. Held in prison for up to a year, then in a locked mental health care facility for up to three years while he undergoes training and therapy to manage his condition. then in 24/7 supervised release where essentially his is under observation of a minder all the time for as long as necessary. 

Seems, at least in outline, that's the treatment he was under, and yet he was able to slither away from custody rather easily and engage in mayhem.

He'd been remanded to a locked Department of Corrections drug and mental illness treatment and recovery facility (for I don't know how long) and after two days he was out and about. He said he was denied his anti-psychotic meds at this facility and he began to act out so much that he convinced the staff to transfer him to a hospital where he may or may not have received any treatment (apparently no treatment and did not receive his medications) and where he was able to call our neighbor to come and get him. This is not quite the story she tells, but anyway... he said that someone else came and picked him up and took him to our neighbor's house where he had stayed without meds for he didn't know how long (a few days) before he was arrested for assaulting me. 

He was on probation, he was under court order to complete treatment at the locked recovery facility and to report to his probation officer regularly. He did neither, and he was able to basically walk away from the hospital where he was taken when his psychotic behavior manifested at the treatment facility.

The treatment I suggested was actually partially under way, and it was ineffective; given what I heard, it was grossly counterproductive.

So.

Where do we go from here? That'll take a while to come to grips with.

Another Dem Political Disaster In the Making

I rarely comment on politics anymore as the situation has been dire and dismal for too long and I'm too old, grumpy and cynical to even bother with it any more. 

As far as I can tell, the Dems are done. They did what they saw themselves elected to do, passing the COVID relief plan of 2020, and that's it. Done. Going home now. Bye-bye. The Congress starts its LOOOONNNNNNGGGGG vacation tomorrow, and they, our elected representatives in the two Democrat controlled bodies, are outa here, so long, too bad about all the things they didn't get done. Maybe next year, eh?

It truly is shameful, primarily for the Dems' failure to recognize that anything is urgent enough to keep them from going home for the summer and letting everything burn while they do whatever it is they do during the hot months. 

Nothing at all is urgent enough for them. Certainly not the looming eviction tsunami. Climate catastrophe. COVID resurgence. Sputtering economic situation. Federal voting rights protections. The faltering lost in the weeds infrastructure half-plan. And on and on and on.

Enh. Too much trouble. Going home now. Y'all can fend for yourself. mkay?

I'm old enough to remember the catastrophic Democratic wipe out in the elections of 2010. At the time, I speculated that it was deliberate. The Dems did not try to hold state and local offices, and they failed to hold on to their congressional majorities, largely it seemed to me because of gross policy failures to adequately address the financial and economic meltdown of the failed previous administration, and perhaps worse, the imposition of what was at the time a very unpopular health insurance mandate (which was not yet in effect) on a long suffering and fearful population. 

This was like a one-two "fuck you" punch to the public, and the public responded by voting them out. 

Bye-bye, so long.

And as is so often the case, those superfluous Dems turned around and blamed the voters for failing to show up at the polls. 

The 2010 R take over of state houses meant that they would be in charge of gerrymandering election districts for the next ten years, possibly longer -- it will be twenty years because Rs still hold the majority of state houses -- and now with voter suppression all the rage among Rs, the outcomes of elections will be determinable by R legislatures and/or election officials regardless of the actual votes. 

It would be astonishing if we hadn't seen this sort of dereliction by Democrats before. In fact, it's so frequent, it's considered normal. Dems don't have a follow-through. They present X+++ as their Plan, they do Y-, and then they go home -- either voted out or as in this case simply because they want to. Nyah. Nyah. 

It's always the voters fault when they do this, never their own.

A lot of internet opinionators hate on the Dems for everything because it's their brand to do so. They claim to be "progressive" or something but objectively they're R shills in "progressive" drag, and they've been around in one form or another since before the internet was born.

And these days we should understand that a lot of Democrats, some in powerful positions in or out of office (particularly but not exclusively in the media) are ex-Republicans who are still ideologically aligned with conservative political and economic ideology. I like to think of Markos over at Daily Kos in this way. He was a die-hard Republican who "switched" during the Bush2 years, especially in support of the Dean campaign in 2004. Dean himself, though nominally a Democrat, was for all intents and purposes a Rockefeller Republican like his parents. Ie: he came from money, was raised in a Republican household, was basically conservative in ideology though with many old-line progressive attributes (Progressivism was originally formulated and implemented within a Republican political context), and had he been elected, he would have governed as a progressive Republican, in contrast to Bush2, who was essentially a corporate shill and war-monger, in other words, a representative of the un-progressive wing of the Republican Party.

Markos likes to claim that his site is intended to help elect "more and better Democrats" -- which it has utterly failed to do. Instead, his and many other ostensibly Democrat-aligned sites on the internet have served to elect many more -- and often worse -- Republicans who have turned into bat-shit fascists. 

I have often criticized Daily Kos for failing to even name a Democrat on its front page, even during election season, while featuring and amplifying Republicans endlessly. Interestingly, the tactic of constantly writing and talking about Republicans while ignoring Democrats doesn't seem to work very well in electing "more and better Democrats," does it?

But since the Republican Party has essentially taken over the Democrats, indeed become "Democrats", we're really dealing with two branches of a Uniparty that both serve corporate interests quite shamelessly, leaving the public to fend for itself. Relying on politicians of either party to serve the public is a fool's game. We haven't seen that happen for generations. And even then, political service to the public was limited.

The failure of Democrats in Congress and the White House to substantially move government from inappropriate corporate service to long-neglected and necessary public service -- again -- is likely to lead to yet another mid-term blow out election for Republicans which signs and signals suggest will be the last more or less "free and fair" election this nation/empire conducts.

Any future election will be an overt sham intended solely to preserve an illusion while protecting and perpetuating neo-fascist oligarchic rule regardless of which team nominally holds power. I think many would say this already happened, perhaps with the Bush v Gore decision of the Supreme Court in 2000.

There's no going back.

Every attempt at restoring some kind of public service -- as opposed to corporate service -- ethic to government since then has failed.

There is no sign any such effort will succeed in the future. Every sign suggests the opposite.

Was Greta the Catalyst for Impeachment of Trump?

The Speaker of the House at long last has announced the "official" start of an impeachment inquiry into the actions of the President of the United States -- apparently over the revelations that the Intelligence Community's Inspector General received a "credible" complaint by an internal whistleblower about...something... an unspecified official (presumed to be the president) did that was inappropriate and possibly illegal with regard to a foreign leader earlier this year.

OK. This is all pretty murky. The IG made a presentation to the House Judiciary Committee but was unable to supply the requested complaint itself as the Director of National Intelligence had refused to release it to Congress on advice of the Department of Justice, despite clear language in the law that required the matter to go before Congress for consideration.

Apparently the DoJ in the person of the Attorney General decided to override the law, claiming to have evaluated the matter as "not urgent."

The matter is assumed by the media to be about the president pressuring the recently elected leader of Ukraine to reopen an investigation of Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, with regard to his service on the board of a Ukrainian gas company some years ago along with Biden's father Joe's request of the former government of Ukraine to remove the prosecutor who had been investigating the company but who was considered irredeemably corrupt both inside and outside the country.

But it is not entirely clear that's the case.

Up to now, Nancy Pelosi has been adamantly opposed to any formal impeachment process in the House of Representatives, often claiming that "the people" aren't supportive of it, and therefore it shouldn't be done.

Suddenly something changed.

Meanwhile at the United Nations, Greta Thunberg made an impassioned speech to the Climate Forum, j'accuse style, that set the world abuzz.

Take a listen:



She shamed the leaders of the world in less than five minutes, shamed them for doing less than they should, or doing nothing at all, in the face of a global existential climate crisis that if unaddressed spells doom for her generation or shortly after. "How dare you!" she bellowed, and her rage was felt around the world.

Meanwhile in DC, the same levels of outrage had been building for years at the inaction of the US Congress and (usually) the courts to hold the current ruling regime and the president to account, to curb their excesses, and to look into impeaching Trump's sorry ass for numerous offenses against simple decency and law, let alone the unending chaos of his regime.

Nancy wouldn't do it. Republicans wouldn't do it. Nobody would. The shit show went on and on, and nothing was done about it by anybody who could do anything about it. The leadership in DC at every level of every party was failing badly.

And then Greta made her speech at the UN and things almost immediately started changing. Maybe not fixing climate, no, but starting finally to think about fixing grossly dysfunctional governments that have failed badly for a generation or more. It's long past time.

At this point, though, it may be too late, either for the climate or for governments. The tipping point may be passed, and there is no going back.

We'll see...



Trans Transition Disruption

My oldest niece (né nephew) is one of those transgender soldiers now (apparently) banned from serving in the military. She retired after nearly three decades of service, transitioning while serving in the California National Guard (c. 2007)

She started her military career -- yes, career -- in the Marine Corps (c. 1976), and after four years, left for a civilian life, only to rejoin the military in the CNG after two years. She stayed in the Guard for over 25 years, retiring as a decorated master sergeant a few years ago.

I don't know many of the details of her service or transition -- at least not in the last few years as we lost contact with her during some other upheavals among the family, and I'm not entirely sure where she is now. Much as I'll bet she's not entirely sure where we are these days.

All I'll add to this right now is that Trump's tweet (whoever wrote it) about banning transgender individuals from the military seemed intended as a disruptive monkey wrench-shiny object, catnip for the media and a vicious blow to a disfavored minority to capture the news cycles while the Senate undertook Repeal and Replace.

It failed mightily.

Anthony Scaramucci put out the idea that Trump was a disruptor operating a start-up the other day. A disruptor yes, but the US Government -- let alone the presidency -- is not a "start-up". Not only will this not end well, I suspect it will end soon.

But then, what do I know? Nuttin'. That's what.

Nope. Fizzled Out Again

The protests have begun to lessen, so it would appear from my perch in the wilderness. They haven't stopped by any means, nor are they likely to end any time soon, but the numbers in the streets have been on a declining trend for some time, and I suspect that something called protest fatigue and burnout is to blame. One can't keep marching and protesting every day, no matter how much one might want to, when there are other matters that need attention. For many, those other matters will include "making a living" and such.

Also, too, consider this: though there have been many indications that a coup of some sort is immanent, for whatever reason it doesn't happen. Instead, we seem to have a situation in which the presidency itself is becoming an irrelevancy -- except for its entertainment value.

Other people, other interests are taking charge of running the government, and as long as Himself is kept on the hustings and/or the sidelines, there's nothing to worry about. Right?

Nothing will happen that the ruling class doesn't want to happen; there will be no fundamental changes in the course of whatever may come. Trump won't change a damned thing. He can't.

Something happened over the weekend, some of which we saw, some of which we aren't privy to, and it was clear enough to observers that Trump's choke chain was tightened a link or two, and his leash was given a jerk. His shtick hasn't changed much -- at least not for his adoring believers -- but his demeanor has been dialed back a notch or two. While he may not be behaving in a classic Presidential style -- not in him to do so -- he's somewhat less abrasive on the Twitter machine, somewhat less stupid-seeming otherwise.

His campaign stop in Florida cheered his demoralized fans and seemed to give him something of a boost. His appointment of Gen. McMaster as National Security Advisor seemed to give the permanent government a reason for hope.

The story is that he isn't really much interested in presidenting beyond issuing diktats and shaking things up for effect. His staff appears to be weak and very limited both in numbers and skill level. They are way out of their depth, The permanent government is not nearly as vulnerable as they believe it to be, and beyond that, they need it if they want to get their policies implemented, their programs done.

Ergo, a tense standoff appears to be in place.

As some observers point out, this is all happening way above our heads, and we the Rabble have very little effect on it. Practically none. We can speculate all we want about what is going on, who's being thrown under the bus, who the survivors might be, yadda yadda, but it doesn't matter a bit. Ultimately, things will or won't happen regardless of the Rabble.

The defenestration of General Flynn, and then of poor Milo, I think served as cautionary warnings, the first to Trump himself, the second to "President Bannon" -- who seems to think he's invulnerable.

Flynn and The Russia Thing seem very bizarre, but there is something going on there beyond the hysterics over nuclear holocaust, etc. Whatever it is, it is being used as a cudgel by elements of the permanent government -- They Who Know -- over the Trump Regime.

My sense is that it has to do with Trump's extensive mob ties, some of which are clearly Russian, and who has dirt on whom. Little or nothing to do with geopolitical strategeries and what not. This reflects on the nature of the presidency itself -- it's been mobbed up for generations -- and how rule is implemented. And by whom.

As for Fucking Milo, GFC on a crutch. That one was almost too easy. I've seen maybe five minutes of his act in toto, and it was obvious from the get that the whole thing was fake. As fake as the ropes of "pearls" he wore for his Bill Maher appearance. No there there, and his provocations (:"":) were as substance free as he was. It was all a charade. Eagerly marketed by those who seek to profit from the gullibility of some of the masses.

Oh well.

Meanwhile, whatever is to come still won't be in our interests. The question is, whose?

Making It Impossible to Govern

I'm not clued in to the various -- and contending -- protest movements under way to "stop Trump". The initial street protests seemed to fizzle out, partly because of the holiday season I'm sure (priorities and all that), partly because people have to work to get by, and partly because they were being overwhelmed/co-opted by Democrats who basically didn't want any uprisings in the streets.

No, they were going to go about the business of de-Trumping by clever political strategy. Except they didn't have one. They still don't. Some of the most ludicrous examples of the failure of political strategies are on view daily at Daily Kos. I will say no more about that.

What the Dems have had all along, though, is an intense and overriding interest in knee-capping the Left -- or what they believe to be the Left. No genuine popular movement can get going under their wing. Any independent "left" movement must be crushed or co-opted. They must control the process. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? Someone like Trump could get elected.... ooops.

Speaking of, we just can't know whether vote casting and counting was done accurately this time around. It's a mystery that will never actually be solved because in too many cases, there's no way to verify the vote. It can't be done. What is becoming known, however, is that efforts to suppress the vote, to disqualify millions of voters, and to make it impossible for significant numbers of voters to vote, or for their votes to be counted were very successful, and these efforts were directed at and largely affected Democratic voters. It also appears that many Democratic voters declined to vote for president, whereas others voted third party.

So for the sake of argument, I'm going to accept the results as a relatively accurate reflection of what those who were able to vote and were so inclined voted for. I'm not taking it on faith. The announced outcome is one of many possibilities. For the sake of argument, the result is instructive.

We get to this outcome in large part through the failure of institutions and politics to protect and defend the People from the depredations of the Overclass, an Overclass which has had almost unfettered free rein to pillage and plunder for decades.

Politics hasn't changed it; politics has enabled it. No matter what the People say they want, no matter what or who they vote for, the political class does what it wants. Institutions have been more interested in preserving, protecting, and defending themselves rather than anything or anyone else, and they have almost all failed their constituencies. NGOs have long been a bad joke. Churches forgot their mission. Institutions of higher learning exploit their students and their parents. Police go rogue and murder without consequence. Financial institutions loot their customers. Media parades bizarre falsehoods.

On and on. It's a goon show, and most Americans know it.

Since its all a con anyway, why not put a master con-man on the throne? What do we think Obama has been? Or Big Dog? Or Bush the Lesser? All of them con-artists. And that's big reason why they were put on the throne to begin with. Their job is to con the public and keep them tame in the face of all the horrors and exploitation they're subjected to. Hillary couldn't do it.

The biggest institutional failure in the political realm is that of the Democrats who have failed in every way -- especially since 2009 -- to protect and defend the People against the forces arrayed against them. I maintain that failure is cynical and deliberate. They knew what they were doing: betraying their constituency. That's been the way of nearly all leftish political parties in the west for many years.

And that is a primary rationale for the "rise of the right." Given that the so-called Left has entirely abandoned the People, there is no political party that serves them. The "rise of the right" is not due to popular will, it's due to abandonment by the pseudo-left, the Democrats and Social Democrats and in some regions by Socialists. They obviously don't care any more -- if they ever really did -- about what happens to the Little People. No doubt it has something to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of China into the capitalist workshop of the world, but that happened so long ago now, hardly anyone remembers any more.

The right rises when the People, abandoned, have no political anchor on the left or center. A political vacuum thus created is filled one way or another.

What is necessary, then, is for the People to take matters into their own hands, outside the political process, and make it impossible for the Ruling Clique to govern.

That's both easier and more difficult than it sounds. Most people, by nature, are going to go along with the powers that be. Most think they have no other choice. On the other hand, it doesn't take a lot of resistance or rebellion to throw a spanner in the works and bring the Juggernaut to a halt -- at least temporarily.

A weak government can be stalled or overcome rather easily.

I will not recommend ways to do it at this point, but understand that many of the "resistance manuals" out there are little more than support manuals for the failed political institutions and systems that don't work.

Robert Reich has one that's gotten some currency. It's not really about resistance at all. It's about supporting failed institutions, the political process and the Democrats. To that I say, No. He blew his premise in any case on Democracy Now! yesterday. It bordered on self-parody. Sorry that Amy didn't call him on his bullshit.

Another is the Indivisible Guide produced by congressional staff and political consultants which again focuses on working within the failed political process that's brought us to this point.  It doesn't work. But it keeps people busy doing things -- which won't work -- so there is that. Keep hope alive and all that!

If the Trumpian agenda is to be stopped or thwarted, what's needed is to make it impossible.

The political system is designed and intended to enable it. It's just that simple.

Cleveland Injustice

The spectacle made by the judge in rendering his not guilty verdicts in the Brelo case in Cleveland yesterday was appalling. I doubt many people were surprised at the verdict itself, but as I watched the spectacle unfold live on WKYC TV, watched as the judge pointed to this, that and the other entry wound in mannikins set up in the courtroom to represent the bullet-ridden bodies of  Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell, claiming as he did that there were so many bullet wounds, he just couldn't tell whether any of the 49 shots fired buy Officer Brelo were the ones that killed the pair, and therefore the officer could not be found guilty of manslaughter. Then from the bench Judge O'Donnell claimed that every use of force, including that of Officer Brelo as he climbed up on the hood of Russell's car and fired again and again and again and again into the quivering, bullet-ridden bodies of Williams and Russell was "reasonable," given that every single officer who fired into that car was in fear of his life and the safety of others, and Officer Brelo, in particular, wasn't certain that the (later found to be nonexistent) threat from Williams and Russell had been neutralized until he stopped firing.

Insane actions by police were justified because... they were afraid of phantoms and believed they must kill Negroes. And the law protects them.

Yet the ones who actually had reason to fear, Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell, were each shot dead, 23 and 24 bullet wounds, by wildly out of control police officers intent on making a kill no matter what, based on nothing more than their errors of perception and their fears and ages of impunity -- and the fact that a couple of Negroes were trying to run away, fearing quite reasonably for their lives. And the law protects them not at all.

Shades of Judge Taney and his statement in the Dred Scott decision that the negro had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

The judge ruled that because so many officers said they were afraid for their lives and the safety of others and so many officers shot at Williams and Russell, he couldn't find Brelo guilty of manslaughter -- because he couldn't determine beyond a reasonable doubt that Brelo had fired the fatal shots. The lesson learned, of course, is that if you set out to kill Negroes, do it with a large enough number of fellows that who fires the actual kill shots can't be determined with certainty.

Further, the judge couldn't find by a preponderance of the evidence that Brelo had acted unreasonably because every other officer was deemed to have acted reasonably under the circumstances by the prosecution's own expert, therefore there was no evidence that Brelo was unreasonable under the circumstances. The lesson: do what you will but do it with others. You can get away with just about anything.

Citing law and precedence and Scalia, after an hour of yadda-yadda, Judge O'Donnell found Brelo not guilty of all charges and ordered his immediate discharge.

Once again, the law and the court vindicated a killer cop. It is what the courts do. It is what they're set up to do and it's what the law "forces" them to do.

If O'Donnell had ruled against Brelo, it would have been considered an aberration, and the ruling would have been immediately appealed. The farther up the legal chain the appeal went, the likelier would be a reversal and admonishment of the judge for overstepping his bounds.

Yet O'Donnell spent his entire preamble pointing to the constant complaints of police brutality and over-policing and police murder and essentially agreeing that police do overreact and are brutal and that complaints about violent policing are frequently justified.

But in this case, legally, no.

The law protects and vindicates police use of force in this case.

And so Brelo walks free. For now.

It's not justice, not even its simulation.

It is injustice writ large and ugly.

It is the reality of our vaunted and grossly imperfect legal system.

#BlackLivesMatter Propaganda and Testimony

Speaks for itself



I would only add that I am well aware that I benefit from white privilege every single day, as I have my entire life. I have personally witnessed incidents like those described and I have heard testimony from many people who have never had the benefit of white privilege, and I have been strongly affected by what I've witnessed and heard. There are some things that are just wrong, and one of them is targeting/profiling on the sole basis of skin color -- which is what police departments and private security are trained and expected to do. Do not believe their denials. They lie.

I have also witnessed disparate sentencing for exactly the same crime. Black and brown people are sentenced to jail, white people -- who have committed the same crime get probation or community service in lieu of jail.

This is wrong. This has to stop, but most white people don't even know it goes on. They have no idea because it doesn't affect them. They assume that all the black and brown people in jail and prison are there because of all the criminality among those people -- but that's not the way it is. They are in jail or prison because that's the way plea bargaining and sentencing works in this country of injustice: black and brown people are sentenced to jail regardless of what they've done or not done; white people are not. They may not even be charged with crimes they've committed, thus they may never wind up in court to plead out and be sentenced.

It's a royally fucked up system. It is a systemic problem of disparate injustice. It is fundamentally racist, classist and sexist.

Tré Melvin is telling the truth, and it is a hard truth for many white people to grasp or understand -- unless they've seen it for themselves and have the compassion to recognize that racism and injustice  is inherent in the system itself. So many people are invested in this system that it is almost impossible to change, but that was the case with slavery and Jim Crow too.  Yet they were changed... well, incompletely and insufficiently, but they were changed.

As for the killing, I want it to stop.

Additional Ukrainian Matters

As Putin-Hitler Stalin-rules the revivified Soviet Union, bulling his way into Europe and re-erecting an Iron Curtain around Crimea and his Russian cronies, enslaving the multitudes and subverting the nations, the cries for even greater ridicule of Romney and Palin and the dreaded Turtle increase.

They love Putin! Therefore, their time in the spotlight is nearly at an end. Well, it would be if they weren't so fun to ridicule. And what about those Duck Dynasty guys? And the Missing Plane? Hmmm? What about them?

Speak not of Young Snowden, however, for his case under HitlerStalin-Putin's fulsome wing is different. He says nothing, he knows nothing, he merely tries to open a debate about the nature of our society and what we and only we want it to be, not about the Soviet Union, which is different. Like he is. So stop saying that. And besides, there isn't any Soviet Union any more, so stop saying that, you look like a fool.

In fact all this hoo-hah does make one wonder. All this hoo-hah, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but masking plenty. What could it be, what could it be? Huh. It's just so puzzling.

Truth is, more and more people are recognizing the real Game here, the Game being obscured by all the hoo-hah and propaganda. By keeping the Rabble uninformed and propagandized to death about the situation faced by Ukraine, its dismemberment -- shall we say, even if it stops with the return of Crimea to Russia -- is simpler. Domestic unrest over economic and social issues is channeled into patriotism and nationalism (it always works, until it doesn't) and anti-enemy-of-the-day OUTRAGE!!!!™.  This shall not stand!!!!

Etc.

From the signs, it's looking more and more like Ukraine will be carved up into enclaves, the easier to exploit its resources and further impoverish its people. The national government of Ukraine has never really worked out well for anyone except the kleptocrats and oligarchs, some of whom are behind the Maidan thing. As much as the Yatsenyuk government is dancing to the tunes of his EU and US "partners," I'm not sure it's playing all that well on the street. The problem which can't really be handled is that of the Nazi shock troops who were used to incite violence and control the crowds in the Maidan and who have been given the "Law Enforcement" and "Justice" portfolios in the self-proclaimed "Interim Government." These people tend not to take well to the diktats of their Betters in Kiev, Berlin and Brussels. They have their own agendas, after all. Ahem.

And there are plenty of separatist interests throughout the rest of Ukraine. The rather elaborate coup that brought down the Yanukovych regime appears to be backfiring. How it was engineered is not entirely clear.

There are more than a few signs that neither the EU nor the US was prepared for what happened when Yanukovych refused to sign away Ukraine to the loving embrace of Europe and NATO in Vilnius last November. They encouraged the demonstrations that arose in response, they may have even planned and helped some of them. But demonstrations along the lines of "Color Revolutions" -- which this one might have been too, as the tactic has been used in Ukraine before (see: "Revolution, Orange") -- but it quickly got out of hand.

The Ukrainian Nationalists, Fascists and Nazis, though relatively few in number, were able to take charge of the course of events. They weren't afraid to use their limited numbers in a forceful and at times violent way, something that was being documented by the Kremlin, but which was largely ignored in the West, although the engineers within the EU and US couldn't have been unaware. They had to have known. They had to have given at least tacit approval.

This was no "nonviolent" Color Revolution. This was an engineered take down of a non-compliant regime, something that was attempted in Syria but has so far failed. How to do it seems clear enough: present the appearance of a mass-revolt through well-attended protests in a significant public space. Inflate the numbers of protesters well beyond the actual numbers present. Tightly control that crowd so as to keep them intently focused on a limited range of "reasonable" issues (in Kiev it was to be European integration, government corruption, and popular dissatisfaction with economic prospects) while the behind-the-scenes operators focus on subverting the government and making it impossible for officials to govern.

The Nazis were the wild card-enforcers, and it doesn't look like it is working out well.

The government ("") that replaced Yanukovych is on a knife-edge. It is unlikely to survive in its present form for much longer. It appears to have little or no control beyond the Palace in Kiev, and the efforts of the US and EU to prop it up are looking more and more dishonest and pathetic. The frantic efforts to solidify agreements with western corporate and EU interests for the prompt exploitation and "economic reform" of Ukraine are unseemly at best, further cause for revolt if the plans are carried out.

The assignment of pro-Yatsenyuk oligarchs to rule the restive Eastern Sektor is simply gob-smacking in its simplicity and obviousness.

The total disinterest of the Powers in the well-being of the People is striking.  This of course follows the same pattern as has been employed already in the EU's near-Periphery, particularly in Greece but not solely there. If the People suffer, according to this Iron Law of Economics, it is their own fault. If they protest their impoverishment and ruin, they are to be suppressed with whatever force is necessary. If they starve and die, too bad, so sad. If this Iron Law is not followed or is resisted in any way by native governments, they are to be replaced, forthwith. That is all.

We've seen it happen over and over again, even in an EU Core country like Italy, where the prime minister was replaced with an unelected technocrat when he attempted to mitigate some of the harsher provisions of the Austerity diktats out of Brussels and Berlin.

As more and more are recognizing, however, it will be worse -- far worse -- for Ukraine, for the simple reason that Ukraine is the Far Periphery, not an EU member, and at best it will serve as a EuroAmerican Colonial-Corporate enterprise zone. At best.

Few among us want to imagine the worst-case scenario, but the embrace of the Ukrainian Nazis and Fascists and Nationalists by the West is a sure clue to where this whole thing may be headed.

"Stalin-Hitler" Putin ought to be concerned.

On the other hand, as always, the people caught in the middle are conscientiously forgotten by all sides in the Pageant of Power.

Hideous.

The Delivery That Doesn't Come

As we know, millions of Americans are still waiting for the delivery of Christmas gifts. I'm one of them.

A gift was ordered a couple of weeks ago for pre-Christmas delivery via FedEx. To date, it still isn't here, though supposedly it left Albuquerque at 4:00am today for delivery... sometime.

We know not when though "Saturday" was listed as the "probable delivery date." Maybe. Who knows?

I loved the excuses UPS and FedEx had ready: "there was so much bad weather and so many more people ordered stuff online we just couldn't get your stuff to you before Christmas. Too bad, so sad."

Contrast that with the unofficial Post Office motto:

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." - Herodotus, 503 B.C.

Perhaps UPS and FedEx will assure us they'll do better-- promise --once the Post Office goes out of business.

FedEx has been the worst, airily proclaiming that the company "experienced no major service disruptions in the week before Christmas despite heavy volume. Every single package is important to us, and we will continue to work directly with customers to address any isolated incidents."

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-ups-fedex-apologize-late-christmas-deliveries-20131226,0,691597.story#ixzz2ooZleCDi

.. so what? Big deal. Get over it.

At least UPS has had the balls to apologize, but still, it seems perfectly obvious what happened.

The private sector delivery services decided that maximizing profits were more important that customer service, and so they didn't hire enough people and they didn't contract for enough extra vehicles to handle the expected holiday volume of packages quickly and efficiently enough to get them to their destinations as promised, and they didn't bother to accurately update their customers on the whereabouts of their items. But they charged full price -- and even a premium -- for inadequate service, and even if they wind up refunding some shipping charges, they will still make out like the bandits they have decided to be.

It's that simple.

What we will find after this experiment in making people miserable and getting away with it is that in the future, "guaranteed delivery" will mean, "maybe" -- sorta/kinda -- in that ballpark, give or take ten days. But if you pay enough and have a private account, anything might be delivered within the hour.

Two tiers.

Don't you see?

Ho ho ho, the yoke's on us.

----------------------------------------------
UPDATE:  Ho ho ho, little did I know.

The Package, this package which was ordered for Christmas delivery, didn't arrive until December 30, and I had to go pick it up. At the Post Office. It was ordered from Vermont Country Store on December 17, and was shipped by them, they said via FedEx Ground, on December 18. Expected arrival, December 23. It took a week longer and I had to pick it up because it was actually shipped via FedEx under contract to the Post Office, and that the shipper of record was the Post Office, not FedEx, although the tracking information was via FedEx. In fact, there was no sign on our end that this was not a regular FedEx shipment. Apparently the package was delivered to a sorting facility in Denver on Dec 20 where it then sat until Dec 26, when it left for Albuquerque, where it arrived on December 27. It went out from Albuquerque on the way to our local Post Office on December 28 (as we were informed it would "probably" be delivered Saturday Dec 28 -- after sitting in Denver for almost a week), but the local Post Office is closed on Saturday. There is no home postal delivery in this area; we have to go to the Post Office to pick up our mail. FedEx, of course, ordinarily doesn't home deliver on Saturdays unless with specific instructions. So even if it had been shipped via FedEx alone and not under contract with the Post Office, there would have been little or no chance of receiving it on Saturday, Dec. 28 in any case. The tracking information was updated on Monday, Dec. 30, to read "Delivery exception -- see your Post Office to pick up or call to reschedule delivery." First we knew that the Post Office had anything to do with it. I go to the Post Office, and sure enough, there's the package, with no sign whatsoever that FedEx had ever handled it at all. All the labels, everything, say USPS. Very intriguing. I knew that the Post Office used FedEx when volume is high, but I thought the point of doing so is not to delay but to expedite shipments. (The Federal Government uses FedEx rather than the Post Office for sending many -- we might even say most -- paper communications between offices. It's a very cozy deal for FedEx.)   In this case, it seemed the delay in Denver was quite deliberate, one might say strategic, on the part of FedEx, for the Post Office would receive the blame, no?  Of course....

So the Government Shut Down and the Coming Debt Default Were Planned In January

Interesting.

At least according to Chait in New York Magazine, this series of crises was plotted out by Republican strategists shortly after the 2012 election in which they failed to remove the President and replace him with their own simulacrum of Imperial Majesty. 

This might help to explain why the Syria Thing didn't get off the ground; the Rs couldn't pull a stunt like shutting down the government or defaulting on the debt if the Nation was embroiled in yet another war in the Middle East. At least you would think they couldn't, but stranger things have happened...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy...

"The Williamsburg Accord," eh?

Well, why not. Makes a kind of warped and perfect sense, and what it tells us is that literally nothing of politics in this country is as it seems because nothing is moored to reality. It's all a show, a game show in a sense, in which Our Rulers posture and roar for entertainment purposes, but which is operating according to a plot and a plan laid out well in advance, according to a "script" if you will, that we -- the onlookers, the audience, the Rabble -- have no effect on at all.

Of course, the Show has an effect on us as it is meant to. This is a government of taking, and we're finding out more and more every day what is being taken, by whom, and how. But we are -- of course -- powerless to do anything about it. That's the whole point. The people we are allowed to choose from at election time all share the same theories of government. They will instinctively follow the same script.

For what it is worth, the "Williamsburg Accord" along with all the other plots and plans we've been subject to lo these many years come out of Republican strategy shops; there is no functional equivalent among the Democrats, and the idea of a Democratic Strategist is an oxymoron anyway. The party functions -- when it functions -- as a foil to the Rs who are in actual control of the government at all times. Even when -- or especially when -- they are crazy-seeming like now.

If Chait knew about the plot and the plan that the Rs came up with in January, then everybody who matters knew, too, yet it is the convention in politics and the media to play dumb while playing along with the script. As if everything that happens is somehow spontaneous, driven solely by the Public Interest. Or something.

To be clear, the Dems knew this was the Plan, too. So did the media. It has not been a secret among those who matter. It has been well publicized for their benefit. But the public, the Rabble, has been left out of the knowledge equation as always. They only see the results of the latest gambit, not how we got here, and they rarely if ever realize that the whole government/propaganda structure is in on the game.

Once again there will be the appearance of a protracted struggle over "principle" or what have you, and once again, because the protagonists are in on it together, they will get what they want -- and what's been planned -- bugger the rest of us.

Sigh.

No, it was not ever thus. But this is how governance has devolved in this country. As some wags have pointed out, the end game is nigh, and it will probably result in the irrelevance of Congress and the institutionalization of a straight-out Imperial (Fascist) Dictatorship. Lucky us.

Justice -- Building A Better Future

There is no term more perverted in recent history than the thing called "Justice."

Throughout the many wars of aggression perpetrated after 9/11, one term has constantly stood out:

"Bring 'em to justice."

What that's meant is death and destruction on the ground and from above, kidnapping, torture, gulags, and worse.

Justice? There's no hint of justice in these actions, in fact just the opposite. But then, these actions mirror so much of what is purported to be 'justice' in the civilian world, where millions are held in custody, tens of thousands in solitary confinement, where torture and brutality are routine, where the concept of a fair trial was long ago subverted, where everyone is subject to constant and often invasive surveillance and whole communities are routinely subject to terror campaigns by police. Where the High and the Mighty get away with just about anything, whereas the lowly Rabble is constantly -- and literally -- under the gun.

Justice?

What a sad, sick joke.

Along with Dignity, Justice is the most frequently heard call of rebels and revolutionaries at home and abroad.

Justice.

What would it mean if we were to build a better future?

The Red Flag In Kerry's Speech

As performance art, SoS John Kerry did a remarkable job yesterday laying out the government's "case against Syria." Just so, and in much the same way, David Cameron and the rest of the British government laid out their "case against Syria" before Parliament earlier.

Of course we're told that "stunningly" Parliament "rejected" going to war -- or indeed, taking any action -- against Syria (though if I understand the arcana of the Parliamentary game correctly, they weren't actually voting for or against a "Syria Campaign, " they were voting on whether to proceed toward such a vote... but never mind.)  The "stunning rejection" was fairly easy to predict once the debate got underway. It was clear that the Honorable and Right Honorable Members were not inclined to take the word of the Government on this matter. "Trust us" wouldn't do. They wanted to see the evidence, and they wanted time to evaluate it. They had been burned by previous demands based on purported evidence, and they were in no mood to comply this time. The level of fraud the British Government had perpetrated on the Parliament and People of Britain over the Iraq Invasion (and much else besides) still rankles, though the perpetrators will not have to face Justice. The Honorable and Right Honorable Members have decided, though, that they won't get fooled soon again. Not soon again.

Meanwhile, we are told that the President is pressing ahead with his determination to "send Syria a message" that the Assad regime cannot "gas its own people" without serious consequences.

Leave aside for the moment that there is no conclusive evidence regarding who was responsible for the attack on the 21st in the suburbs of Damascus. The Assad regime denies culpability. The UN has not made a report. And witness testimony is all over the map with claims and counterclaims flying. Who did what to whom in a civil war is frequently impossible to sort out until long after hostilities have concluded, and they may still be disputed into eternity. Cf. Srebrenica among so many examples in the civil wars concomitant on the break up of Yugoslavia.

John Kerry gave one of his better performances yesterday as he laid out the US Government's "case against Syria" for the public. He has tended to be mealy-mouthed and confused when publicly speaking for the last many years, but yesterday he was firm and coherent and stentorian. This is important for credibility, dontchaknow.

But the red flag for me was his precise figure of "at least 1,429" dead in the attack on the 21st, a number that had never previously been heard or reported. He also listed a precise number of children killed, a number never previously heard before as well.

These figures are far, far higher than any independent source had reported up to that time, which made Kerry's repeated statement that "we know" this or that more than a little problematical. If "we know" something that no one else on earth does, and those who are there "know" something quite different, then somehow someone isn't telling the truth or there is something else is going on that we, the Rabble, are simply not privy to.

Where did Kerry's numbers come from, and how have they been so precisely determined in the midst of the chaos of the attack and its aftermath? How is it that the US Government can so precisely determine what those on the ground cannot?

Yes, it's a big red flag.

On The Question of Exemptions From Security State Scrutiny

During the past month or so, we've seen an explosion of interest in the National Security/Surveillance State apparatus, and we've learned about its vast reach around the world and its apparent ability to spy on anyone at any time. How such spywork product is used is still somewhat murky, as we really have no idea which Americans have been spied on by the NSA (leave aside for the moment the question of foreign targets) and to what object if any. There have been suggestions, however, that when the NSA "targets" an American it is for the purpose of domestic law enforcement or active terrorist investigation, and that essentially all the NSA provides in such cases is raw digital data that may or may not be useful in the investigation. But we don't know that. We don't know a lot of things about how our rulers keep tabs on us or what they do with the information.

What we do know is that a number of individuals and institutions have demanded to be exempt from the sort of blanket scrutiny everyone else is under, starting with "the press."

There was, after all, something of a trial balloon on the topic of uncalled for domestic surveillance when the AP Thing (ABQ Journal story; if not a subscriber, you will need to answer a marketing question) broke back in May (was it? doG, it seems so long ago.)  The issue then was slightly different in that phone calling records of AP reporters were sought and looked at by DoJ in connection with an investigation of a leak of high level information to the press. Sound familiar? Sure. The upshot was that not only was the AP marching around in High Dudgeon over this "Chilling of Freedom of the Press," they would demand and have essentially received an exemption from this kind of surveillance scrutiny going forward. Whoo-hoo!

As I pointed out at the time the story was making headlines, though, EVERYONE was subject to the kind of surveillance AP was demanding an exemption from, and the real issue was the intrusive/invasive that was probing everyone's phone records and doG knows what-all with or without warrants. This was in May, remember, a solid month before the NSA story broke in the Guardian. We knew -- or at least "anyone who was paying attention" knew -- that we rabble and proles were being spied on by Our Betters in both the government and the corporate sectors the government serves, and many of us knew how that information was being used, too. Anyone who was or is involved in Occupy, for example has more direct knowledge of the National Surveillance State than most other Americans by far, but America's Muslim community has had much more ongoing negative experiences with it, and black and brown communities in general have been its targets for generations.

At some point though -- variously dated to 2001 (prior to or almost immediately after the installation of the Bushevik regime) or 2005 (when certain devices were installed)  -- the surveillance started including everyone, all phone calls and other telecommunications, at home and abroad, and for a time -- maybe still -- there was someone assigned to surveil every physical address in the country. It was long ago out of control, and the NSA wasn't the chief culprit.

The principal base-line culprit all along has been the corporate entities that collect information on all of us, that analyze and store it, and that share it for a price or in trade with one another and with government agencies. That's where the data-haul comes from for the most part, and quite willingly, too, despite the lies and the denials of many of the corporate culprits.

So comes the AP Thing in May, and AP is demanding an exemption, because of the First Amendment. Never mind the Fourth Amendment because invoking that would mean everyone would be exempt from blanket surveillance, and what's the fun of that?

AP got their exemption in July as the link above describes. After the AP story broke, a FOX "news" reporter was revealed to be under similar surveillance due to another leak investigation, and wah-lah, FOX, too, was given the same exemption as AP. In fact, all "legitimate" so-called news orgs were given the same exemption in the DoJ announcement. Determining who or what is "legitimate" became an issue, but it's clear enough from the announcement that bloggers and independent media are not considered "legitimate" by the corporate media or the DoJ. So at least we know that not everyone who practices journalism is considered "legitimate" -- and we can be pretty sure where that will lead, too.

Needless to say, despite a rather full court press by various media, including much of New Media, Blobosphere and all, the story of surveillance of the AP (and later of FOX) and their demands for exemptions on Constitutional grounds failed to catch the mood of the country, I think because people wondered why should they be exempt while everyone else is being watched all the time?  Constitution? Feh.

On the other hand, when the NSA story broke in June, just about a month after the AP story broke, all holy hell broke loose because, surprise, the upshot of the initial few stories was that EVERYONE was under surveillance by the NSA, and there was really nothing anybody could do about it -- that is if they chose to live in the Modern World.

Oh. Well. What a surprise. "We didn't know..." And we demand....? Going from knowledge of surveillance to the Ask has been something of a rocky road to say the least. Just what is it Snowden, Greenwald and the rest have in mind as the goal as it were? We don't know. They initially said all they wanted was a "debate" about the surveillance they were revealing; then Greenwald the other day in his Argentine interview said that they wanted people to know that certain software was being employed to hoover up all phone and other electronic communications pretty much everywhere and suggested that by knowing this people could take precautions and even elude the hoover. But whatever the case, at no point have Greenwald or Snowden suggested ending the Surveillance State. They haven't even called for the repeal of the legal underpinnings (like AUMF, NDAA, PA, and FAA) that have enabled it and encouraged its metastasis.

I find that rather curious myself. No, all they say they want is the "debate" and for people to have knowledge that they are being surveilled.

All righty then. Implied is the notion that some people should be exempt from blanket surveillance, starting with technically adept people, for example, who know what to do to elude the surveillance bots through strategic technical gamesmanship. I've seen some of them post instructions on how to do it, and it's mostly gobbledygook, useless for everyday people, and probably non-functional in any case due to coding and other errors, whether accidental or deliberate. The fact is many geeks are not inclined to ensure that you are free of surveillance, only that they themselves are. Liberty!

Meanwhile, when the NSA domestic surveillance story was still somewhat new, Congresscritters held hearings and demanded of the spooks giving testimony that they, sitting Congresscritters, be exempted from surveillance, and they were assured that they were indeed exempt. I don't think many of them believed it though, as some of their colleagues had been clearly and obviously surveilled over the past many years, and some of them seem to be convinced that prosecution and blackmail are not unheard of in the Hallowed Halls due to findings of the surveillance bots.

Of course the press and media (well, that part which is "legitimate") demanded -- and got -- their exemption.

Anybody else seeking exemption from general surveillance? You would think the corporate board rooms and bankers' counting rooms would be automatically exempt. That is where Power is concentrated, yes? Can't have random spooks snooping around among the Highest of the Mighty, can we? In fact, corporate board rooms and bankers' counting rooms are where much of the snoopery of the rest of us originates, or at least where the plots and plans for it are laid and implemented. Let's not fool ourselves into believing it's any other way.

Of course, people in Greenwald's somewhat... interesting... position would naturally want their own exemption (albeit, he hasn't asked for one specifically for his ownself, not that I know of anyway). Expat world traveler journalist/polemicist/propagandist/provocateurs such as he might actually want to avoid the security/surveillance state for some reason, I don't know what, but he has never indicated that he's suffered personally in any particular or general way from the surveillance he must -- I mean MUST -- be under... hm. How does that work, I wonder? Is he surveilled but exempted from consequences? Or is he not surveilled at all? Or...? Is it something else?

Well, we don't know, and we're unlikely to ever find out, either. Wheels within wheels, don'tchaknow. It is quite an interesting game being played by individuals and institutions seeking to perfect their power relationships with one another, if you will. That much is obvious to me. Their rivalries and controversies have little to do with us, after all. This is a reason why the NSA/Snowden Thing strikes me as a bit overwrought given their apparently top-level at 40,000 feet overlook position, not generally one that affects individuals, nor necessarily does it affect contending institutions in their power plays. Or does it?

What exactly does the NSA do that interferes with the machinations of the Highest of the Mighty? We get some clue now and then when we hear dark rumblings of intellectual property piracy and unauthorized sharing of corporate marketing and other plans through some sort of spy network, but it is a murky tale at best and rarely told with any clarity at all. Is the NSA the lead agency in these matters? Mmm. Could be.

If as may be the corporate boardrooms and the R&D departments are the real playgrounds of the NSA and other spooks, despite denials (who really believes them, anyway?) then the demands for exemption that are background noise right now may have more to do with the nature of the NSA controversy/"scandal" than we know, and once that's worked out to mutual satisfaction, this Thing will settle right down.

We've been living in an era of institutional failure and collapse. Practically everything we've relied on for social, political, and economic stability in our lifetimes has proved to be worthless or has collapsed in failure. Yet wealth and power are ever more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and more and more authoritarian and exploitative rule is being imposed on the masses. In the overall context of institutional collapse and failure and the general imposition of authority and exploitation of the masses, the spook stories and consequent impotent rage they inspire is very useful for the interests who seek to consolidate power over the rest of us.

To me, that's the reason why the NSA story is being played to such a high level of public exposure this Shark Season. Nothing will be done about curbing domestic/international surveillance of the masses, though the masses will be whipped to a frenzy of anger about it. As Naomi Wolf pointed out, the Surveillance State is useless for controlling the masses if they don't know about it. Now they know. They have had an opportunity to vent about it, but their venting results in nothing. Nothing changes. It's the way of the world.

Behind the curtain, however, in that Deep State which actually rules us (oh yes, the Turks have nothing on US), there are many adjustments going on, both here and abroad, and fierce contests are under way over which surviving institutions will hold the primary reins of power. Make no mistake, Greenwald, the Guardian, and more than likely Snowden, are Players in that game. What role they have on the chessboard is an open question, but they are clearly not uninvolved observers and dispassionate Truth Tellers. They are obviously working on behalf of something greater than themselves, but exactly what that might be is still murky -- I have called them Corporate Libertarians, but that doesn't describe their actual roles and goals.

Nor does it reveal where all this is headed. On the surface, it's just another summer shark story, another missing white woman, for the rabble to fret over. But go a bit deeper, and ponder who and what is being "exempted," from scrutiny by the surveillance state, as power is consolidated on behalf of surviving institutions in this era of institutional collapse, and we can start forming a pretty good picture of how the story may play out.

We'll see.

And Then There's The Voting Rights Thing, The DOMA Thing, and The Prop 8 Thing

Why the Supreme Court is considered to have any legitimacy at all is one of those Mysteries we may never be able to settle. The Court has been acting quite lawlessly since... well, some would say, since forever (given Marbury v Madison, after all), but jeeze, they really set the standard for lawless "justice" with Bush v Gore, so I'll just date their detachment from any concept of law and justice on December 12, 2000. Others may disagree.

At least for a while, they were being led around by the nose by a forthright anti-constitutionalist, one Nino Scalia -- who was the motor behind Bush v Gore. Since his descent into full on dementia, however, his theocratic-monarchism has been overshadowed by the technocratic-corporate objectivism of one John Roberts, Esq, which explains why practically every significant decision out of the Marble Halls since his Elevation has turned on some of the most arcane legal reasoning in the Court's long history.

The Voting Rights Act was made inoperative the other day, much to the chagrin of voting rights advocates, I suppose, but the Court had been telegraphing its intentions with regard to the VRA for some time, so the decision was No Surprise. There is no right to vote in the Constitution, something which for some reason has never been remedied or even addressed in any comprehensive way. Instead there have been piecemeal efforts to extend the franchise from white property owning males to various other groups over the centuries, without interfering (much) with the States' Rights principle that the States, not the Central Government, are to decide voter-criteria. It's created some icky, cobbled together monstrosities and made elections far more difficult than they need to be.

This is supposed to represent the Genius of Our Founders, but it's nothing of the kind. It's a gawd-awful mess, and it's been getting worse for many a long year.

But that's really a separate issue than the Voting Rights Act which was a measure passed and renewed by Congresses for decades to ensure that the most egregious state-sanctioned racially discrimintory voting restrictions were done away with. Itg was a way of ensuring black voters -- in particular, but certainly not exclusively -- were brought into the system rather than excluded, despite the outrage of the Good Ol' Boys, especially in the South.

In making the VRA inoperative, the Court has said to the Good Ol' Boys, "Here's your playground back. Don't do anything naughty! Haw, haw!"

These people are sickening.

There has been an ongoing long-standing effort by certain interests to tighten and restrict voting rights nationwide. Now those who would undertake to do so have free rein. But then, what's there to "vote" for anyway?  If they can't control elections from one direction, they're bound and determined to do it from another. So here we go again. It's one reason people flirt with alternatives to Our Model, which is both anachronistic and unjust.

We'll see where this leads, but outwardly it's right back to where things were before the Civil Rights Movement.

Oh, but, they struck down DOMA and let stand gay marriage! Civil Rights Live! Yes, well, this is the kind of trade off you get from this Court. Massive civil injustice (such as the disabling of the VRA) on the one hand, together with a modest and generally cynical extension of "rights" on the other. Take away voting rights, but let people gay-marry to their heart's content. Sounds fair, doesn't it?

As far as I'm concerned, DOMA was a shitty measure, and Prop 8 was just nasty, but the underlying issue was never really dealt with, and it still hasn't been. I've long advocated that government not be in the marriage business at all, that marriage qua marriage be left to the religious institutions to do with as they please. And in that context, gay marriage has been going on for decades in churches and synagogues throughout this troubled land. Some religious institutions forbid it, but some do not. To my way of looking at it, that's how religious liberty works -- and should work.

The government should have nothing (much) to say about it. "Marriage" as such should not be a matter for civil law at all. Instead, all legal unions between couples should be civil unions. And they should be gender neutral. If you want to get gay-married, find a religious institution that will sanction it. There are many. On the other hand, if you want to set up a legal-couple household, regardless of gender, go down to the civil union registry and do so.

Well, of course, this idea is too radical. It would mean changing oodles of other laws, particularly regarding benefits and inheritance and so on and so forth, all of which refer to spousal and marriage and such and we can't do that, let's just legalize gay-marriage and be done with it. Ta-da.

That would be fine if marriage were not a religious sacrament to hundreds of millions. By legally enforcing a change who can obtain that sacrament (albeit from civil authority) and under what conditions, the foundations of rule and social cohesion tremble. Simply by taking marriage out of the gambit of civil authority and leaving it to the tender mercies (or...) of the religious divines, it seems to me the issue and the problem would have been solved neatly and correctly.

But no.

So now we have this strange situation in which in essence the Court has said states can go ahead and restrict the franchise however they want at least until Congress comes up with something new to foster voting rights, and by the way your vote doesn't matter anyway, because the Court will rule any way they want to get the outcome they desire, so ha ha, suckers!

The shameful spectacle of this Court goes on and on and on...

Americans Haven't Quite Reached This Spot Again...Not Yet

 

Florence Owens Thompson and children, March 1936

Dorothea Lange's iconic photo of Florence Thompson and three of her children will, it seems, forever be imprinted on the psyches of Americans as an image of untellable suffering in this Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Most people will have little or no idea what was going on or who these people were or even where or when this picture was taken. It is the most singular icon of the Dust Bowl Era/Great Depression, without doubt or dispute. There are other photos from the era that resonate to be sure, but nothing like this one.

First off, I think it is of some note that this picture was taken in 1936, when the Depression, or at least its worst aspects of mass suffering, was perceived to be mostly over. FDR, the New Deal and all that.

It was taken on California's Central Coast, not Dust Bowl Oklahoma, and though Florence and her older children (not these -- her younger children were born in California) were from Oklahoma, they had been in California mostly working in the fields up and down the state since 1931. They were not Dust Bowl refugees -- at least not any more. They were migrant laborers in the fields of California, like tens of thousands of others did then -- and still do.

 Of course in those days, many of the California field hands were white. Nowadays, not so much. Nearly all of the field hands today are Hispanic, mostly from Mexico, though many are from Central America, and not a few were born and raised in California of Mexican or Central American parents.

For a time, and even in Thompson's time, it seemed to be possible to go from the fields in California to a fairly comfortable, fairly middle class lifestyle in one or at most two generations. That passage seems far from certain now. In this country today, if you're born poor, you'll most likely stay poor the rest of your life. Same for any children you might have. There is less social and economic mobility in the United States today than perhaps at any time in its history, less mobility in fact than in most other places in the developed world.

Florence and her children were poor to be sure, but they were not truly destitute at the time of the photo, though that's how they were portrayed by Lange and the press, a press which glommed onto the photo immediately and presented it as a portrait of despair and destitution of unparalleled magnitude in this land of plenty, and this after three years, three years!, of the New Deal.

According to the story Florence told later, what happened was that the family -- which included Jim Hill, her (common-law?) husband at the time, her older children and these younger ones -- were traveling from fields they'd been working in the Imperial Valley toward Watsonville near Salinas, where they hoped to find more work, but the timing chain on their Hudson broke and they coasted into a large ad hoc migrant camp (that held at that time maybe 2,000 or 3,000 hopeful workers) in Nipomo. (I'm very familiar with all these places, having lived and worked in or near California's agricultural areas most of my life. There are also other connections which may come up in other posts.)

The workers were there because they'd heard there was field work to be done picking peas, but when they got there, a freezing rain had ruined the crop and there was no work.

Many of the migrants in the camp were destitute and starving, but Florence's family were not. Comparatively speaking, they were doing OK.

Florence and her children were laying over in the camp while Jim Hill and the older boys were in town getting the car fixed so they could continue their journey north toward Watsonville. While in the camp, Florence said they subsisted on frozen peas they collected from the fields and the few birds the children were able to kill for the cooking pot. Hungry children came by and asked if they could please have a bite. Once the car was fixed, they moved on.

That they had a car and were used to the migrant labor life in California was to their advantage. While they had advantages that many others didn't, their life in the fields could not have been pleasant.

California's field hands were and are terribly exploited, often wretchedly housed and provided for, and frequently treated with feudal levels of abuse. Migrant field workers in California were and are beneath the level of an oppressed underclass; they were frequently seen and treated as disposable slaves by their employers.

Eventually, the Florence and family moved to California's Central Valley, still doing mostly farm labor, but apparently settling down near or in Modesto,  where Florence would meet and marry George Thompson, a hospital administrator, and from 1945 onwards, the family would live in modest financial security.

Florence claimed to be a full-blood Cherokee, born ("in a teepee") and raised outside of Tahlequah, OK. Her blood father was a Christie, and so could have been full-blood Cherokee, but he abandoned Florence's mother (of the Cobb family, and thus likely not full-blood Cherokee) before she was born. Her mother then married Charles Akman, of Choctaw descent. (All this, according to the Wiki...)

The other day, I was in the company of a genealogist out of Tahlequah who is a Christie descendant on his mother's side, and he said he'd been trying to trace Florence's Cherokee ancestry and was coming up short. Of course Cherokee lineages can be complicated. Just ask anyone who's tried to demonstrate their blood quantum to the satisfaction of the authorities of the Cherokee Nation. It can be quite a complex and drawn out process, even for full-bloods.

Of course Florence, even if a full-blood Cherokee (which is unlikely in any case), would not have been born "in a teepee" as teepees were not used by Cherokee people (nor by Choctaw) at any time.  But then, people tell tales...

The Cherokee Christies were and are based around Wauhillau, OK, not far from Tahlequah, and Florence's biological father was said to be Jackson Christie, who appears on the Dawes Rolls from Wauhillau as a full-blood. Her mother, a Cobb, however, is the more problematical ancestor, as there is no Mary Jane Cobb listed on the Dawes Rolls, and the only Mary Cobbs listed are of 1/4th and less Cherokee blood quantum. Of course, there were plenty of Cherokee of all blood quantums who were never listed on the rolls, so nothing conclusive can be said about Florence's mother's Cherokee ancestry -- or lack thereof.

That a Cherokee genealogist cannot trace her with any certainty is interesting but not unusual, given the fact that Florence's biological father (apparently a full-blood Cherokee) ran off before she was born, and she was raised by a (supposed) Choctaw adoptive father. Well, in Indian culture, she wouldn't have been raised by either father but instead would have been brought up in her mother's matrilineal household, with slight contact with "fathers." But if Florence's mother was a Cobb (there's no reason to doubt it), it's quite possible she was less culturally Cherokee, and so she might not have raised her daughter in the culture. On the other hand, she just as well might have.

Florence kept company with several men and (officially) married two of them though both died before she did. She had six or seven children, all of whom seem to have had great admiration for her. She appears to have engaged in field work in California for as long as she had to and was physically able to, but when the opportunity arose, she left the fields to work in hospitals, and by 1945 she had settled down in Modesto with her last husband, a hospital administrator -- which no doubt relieved her of any obligation to work the fields of California again.

When Dorothea Lange took that iconic picture, Florence's situation was not as dire as it was made out to be in the press, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking it was somehow "good" just because she and her children weren't actually stranded and starving, and she hadn't actually sold the tires on her car to buy food. The family's car would be repaired, and they would move on. But that didn't mean their situation was much better than miserable.

The status of the thousands of others at the Nipomo camp really was dire, though, and some actually were starving. The "Migrant Mother" picture of Florence and her younger kids led to the transport of tens of thousands of pounds of food to the camp to help succor those still trapped there. The fact that Americans could still be in such appalling circumstances, years after the advent of the New Deal under Roosevelt, came as a shock to many who had convinced themselves the New Deal had eliminated this level of destitution and desperation.

It did not. It wasn't until the 1960s and the Great Society programs of the Johnson Era that "Freedom from Want" was actually made a social and political principle in this country, a principle that we may note is being dismantled as our governing representatives seek ways to cut benefits for the masses, including Social Security and food stamps, while continuing to increase rewards and benefits for the highest of the mighty.

This is why the National Surveillance/Security State has become so essential to those few who are accumulating such remarkable rewards during a period of such economic decline and hardship for so many. As we see the identity of "terrorist" re-defined over and over and over again to include more and more individuals and groups that might one day prove problematical to the rule by the very few and the unfettered exploitation and impoverishment of the masses, we see the true nature of the Security fetish of Our Rulers. We see the "why" being answered with action.

We are all, ultimately, potential suspects and thus we all must be surveilled. This is essential for the survival and continued prosperity of Our Betters. Uppitiness must be channeled and controlled, revolt must be suppressed.

I find it interesting that some people who point out that this is the way it has been for a long time are being denounced as "Obots" and whatnot, when they are trying to get across the notion that some people have been yelling about the Surveillance State and the Security Fetish of the Ruling Class for many years and have generally been ignored or shushed, on the fictional basis that it's not really happening, or if it is, it isn't really all that worrisome, or if it is worrisome, it's better to keep quiet about it. Instead of taking it seriously when something might have been done about it, too many of those with prominent platforms in the media and on the internet were either silent or extra cautious, fearing that if too much was said or made of it, or if objections actually led to action, the Stasi would be on their tails like white on rice.

Now, interestingly, they aren't afraid, nor do they hesitate to accuse those who were calling for action years ago of being tacit supporters of universal surveillance and the security state all along. It is very much a through-the-looking-glass and down-the-rabbit-hole situation, by no means the first in these realms.

Now it's an all-important issue, but what's to be done about it -- apart from arguing and debating in endless circles?

In 1936, Americans discovered to their shock and horror that the New Deal hadn't really accomplished what they thought it had set out to do, and many millions of Americans, symbolized by Dorothea Lange's portrait of Florence Thompson, were still suffering severely. They would be reminded again in the 1960s with exposés of economic and social hardships  all over the country. In those days, Americans and their representatives in Congress assembled were empowered to and capable of doing something to alleviate that suffering.

Now? Not so much. No, let's be honest: not at all. Our Rulers are actively instituting programs of impoverishment and suffering for the masses, and the public is advised to acquiesce quietly or be subjected to the tender ministrations of or brutal suppression by the bloated National Security State -- as has been demonstrated against various groups and individuals for years. We are well past the point where the People might have intervened to halt or reverse our collective disempowerment.

Now the options for reversing what's been under way for so many years are highly constrained. Lawsuits are among the options available. But when the courts are part of the problem...

Congressional agitation is potentially useful, but when congress itself is part of the problem...

Popular outrage is hard to sustain when the Ruling Classes really don't give a shit about what the People want any more...

It's another fine mess we've got ourselves into...

Glenda Jackson Eviscerates The Thatcher "Legacy"

The outpouring of bile toward the Baroness Thatcher is quite something to see, given the hagiography of her great and bosom friend of Ronald Reagan. Not that it will make much of a difference in the end, but still.

Jackson doesn't hold back, despite the whining of the Conservatives...

The Freakout Continues, cont'd....

His Serenity Back In The Day

Now that His Serenity's Budget has been released, shrunk wrapped and all, and yes, indeed, it contains cuts to Social Security (scheduled benefit increases are to be based on the Infamous Chained-CPI instead of current COLA formulae and expected inflation rates; it's complex) and Medicare (scheduled payments to providers are slated for cuts and beneficiaries contributions are scheduled to increase), all heck has broken loose, at least among "progressives."

Who insist that there be "NO CUTS!!!"

Well. Fine. That's not going to help much, though, when All The Serious People insist that these aren't "really" cuts, at least not from current benefits, they merely slow the rate of increase "to more closely reflect the actual impact of inflation." Yeah, right. Lies and damned lies, but whatever.

The issue, as I've said before, is that maintaining the status quo -- which is all that "NO CUTS!!!" does -- is actually a step backwards because current COLA formulae don't reflect actual cost of living increases for anyone, let alone elders. Consequently the only serious progressive position should be to increase SS benefits by substantially more than current COLA formulae do.

Duh.

But of course, that's not the "progressive" position.

Not even Bernie Sanders'.

If "NO CUTS!!!" is the opposition position and only "progressives" are expressing this position, then the game is already lost no matter what the outcome.

Young Ezra may have actually written a column with charts and graphs and stuff that show -- or suggest -- that increasing benefits is better for the economy than reducing them or their rate of growth, but so what? Who is claiming that the economy will be better for these cuts? Who is claiming that the intent of these cuts is to improve the economy? Ha ha ha.

The intent is obvious: ensure that the High and the Mighty will never be required to pay one dime in taxes to support other people's old folk or to pay back any of the trillions of dollars in tax reductions they've received due to the trillions in surplus SS taxes already paid for their own and their parents' retirements.

It's been obvious for years.

Cutting scheduled Social Security benefits has been on the political agenda of the Highest of the Mighty ever since the failure to privatize the system under the Busheviks. This doesn't mean they are giving up on their ultimate goal of stealing the entire SS money pot. In fact, the payroll tax "holiday" and the White House's open advocacy for Chained CPI are almost as obviously means toward that end. Privatization of the program can then be hailed as the means to increase benefits, and I'll bet you even Bernie Sanders supports it.

Sometimes it's so easy to read these entrails.

False Statements

Isn't it something that the SBSD and the LAPD can issue a tissue of lies, a veritable festival of them when it comes to it, regarding Dorner and his last few hours -- and get away with it, while Dorner himself quite likely told the truth about misconduct he witnessed within the LAPD and got his ass fired for it, his life ruined and finally ended, in one of the most gruesome and yet inevitable endings we've seen since Waco.

It's pretty much the definition of the era we live in.

Disappeared -- The Pre-Legend of Chris Dorner

Here to Help

Have you noticed that despite the intense media coverage of the Dorner Manhunt, and even despite the $1 million reward offered up by the City of Los Angeles yesterday (thanks to a cohort of anonymous wealthy donors)  the object of all this attention hasn't been seen or heard from in something like a week now.

He's disappeared.

Have you noticed, too, that despite the efforts of the LA and other police forces to provide Dorner with the formal three-name sobriquet always utilized for major league -- and some minor league -- criminals (in this case "Christopher Jordan Dorner") most people seem to be sticking to the informal "Chris Dorner," as if he were somebody they knew or had a beer with on occasion, who they liked and trusted, who was their friend.

Have you noticed that even though Dorner is now designated a Domestic Terrorist by the LAPD (by what authority, I wonder?) the public outpouring of understanding and even support for his cause -- which is widely recognized as a cause of "justice" -- has not diminished; if anything, it's increased. His methods may be wrong, but his cause is just, so goes the reasoning.

I've mostly followed the story online and watched with something close to amazement as the comments about it have gone from clearly in favor of the police doing "whatever is necessary to take him out" to "he's doing what he has to, may not be the right way to do it, but he's already done or tried to do all the right things and has been screwed over." The sympathy/empathy for him and contempt for the LAPD is almost all that appears in comments about the story now. It's nearly universal.

This is, I think, unprecedented at least in modern times. I've heard of outlaws in pioneer days and during the Depression receiving a lot of public support despite their status as outlaws, but the Outlaw Character has practically disappeared from American mythology these days, and people who do things which are counter to the prevailing social mores are routinely denounced, demonized and whenever possible destroyed.

This is something else again.

While the police initially panicked to protect themselves, causing a great deal of collateral damage -- thankfully no one died in the hail of bullets let loose against phantom targets of opportunity -- now they're scrambling merely to hold on to any public good will at all. It's a sight to behold. Step by step, as they have lost the public's good will through many unforced errors over the years and the clearly out of control bolloxing of this case going back to its origins in the official mistreatment of Dorner for daring to complain about abuse he witnessed, the police have tried practically all the PR stunts they can think of -- mass armed assemblies and fruitless searches in the snow at Big Bear, conceding the need for further review of Dorner's complaints while designating him a Domestic Terrorist, fundraising and offering a million dollar reward, moderating press conference statements about him, apologizing to the citizens shot up by mistake, so on and so forth -- they are not winning back the public trust. The more they try to smooth over the PR disaster they have on their hands, a disaster of their own making let it be said, the more the public sees their desperation, and the higher their level of contempt.

The more I see of this Charlie Beck person who is allegedly chief and in charge of the operations of the LAPD, the more repellant and snake-like he becomes. He's been floundering so badly, and yet is still put forth as the face of the agency. Something tells me he's not in charge at all; he's the fall-guy and will be sacrificed at the appropriate moment by those who are really in charge.

Who could that be I wonder.

Is this all an elaborate ruse to get rid of him while preserving the malformed institution he ostensibly heads? The "Chinatown" elements of whatever happens in LA are never buried very deep in any case; things are typically not what they are said to be or what they seem to be, there is always an underlying -- and often very different and very corrupt -- "necessity" being protected and promoted.

The LAPD exists to protect certain interests and certain people and to ensure that the control and exploitation of the rest continues without interruption or hindrance. When things go wrong, as they do every now and then, the LAPD pays for it with another round of "reform." But the "reform" never actually reforms the institution, because its whole point is to protect certain people and interests while ensuring control and exploitation of the rest. That's what the LAPD is for. When you understand that, you understand what their motto ("To Serve and Protect") really means. It doesn't mean they "serve and protect" you you see. Never.

There seems to be a widespread understanding that Dorner tried to do the right thing by bringing abuse that he witnessed to the attention of his superiors and he was punished for it. We can be certain that he is not the only one by any means.  He did what he thought was right and what he was supposed to do, and he was slapped down, hard, by a system that cannot accommodate that kind of idealism and honesty.

For the supposed chief now to reopen his case and pledge honesty and transparency (of course, we can assume it's a fraudulent pledge, but that's another issue, not germane to the matter at immediate hand) in reviewing the facts and Dorner's complaints, tells me that Dorner's "manifesto" has struck a strong chord within the department, that many, many LAPD officers have either hesitated to bring their own complaints about racism and abuse to the attention of superiors for fear of retaliation, or that they themselves have faced similar punishment to that of Dorner for trying to do the right thing, and now they're saying, "Look, this shit has got to stop."

Of course, the purpose of the institution requires that the shit continue. Even redouble. So they'll do what they have to to make it look like they're reforming or changing, but they won't actually reform. They'll fuss with process, they'll declare the matter settled. If you have any doubt about how these things go, look at what the Catholic Church has done in the face of withering criticism (oh yes, and lawsuits, many many lawsuits) of its institutionalized child abuse. Almost every "reform" has been eyewash.

So it is and will ever be with the LAPD.

It is the Iron Law of Institutions, and the only way to really change it is to abolish the institution and start over -- which isn't going to happen. Well, not before the Revolution comes.

Dorner's pre-legend is being put together right now, despite the fact that he is nowhere to be found. Is he even still alive? Who knows? He will become a legend whether or not he is ever found, dead or alive (my own suspicion is that he took his own life, perhaps in Big Bear). He might become a legend as powerfully iconic as the Hugo Weaving character in "V is for Vendetta." Let there be comics and movies and songs and stories.

And let there be masks. He's already got the smile...