Bad American

Associated Press

Here’s some photos on the Texas cops who staged that raid on the Texas polygamist sect compound. Seems like a lot of military ninja type gear to ‘rescue’ a teenage girl who may have been fictitious anyway. The point isn’t that the sect might be full of people we might find strange but that doesn’t excuse the unnecessary force used in the raid.

And understand that all over the US, local yokel cops are getting all of this gear for nonspecific ‘threats’ i.e. terrorists and other nonsense. But isn’t it interesting how often this gear is used in ’show the people whose boss’ raids against typical criminal mopes. Yes your local cops want you to know that they have tanks and such and are quite itchy to use them against any perceived ‘threat.’

This photo taken Thursday, April 3, 2008 by an unidentified member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and released Tuesday, April 15, 2008 by church attorney Rod Parker, the spokesperson for members of the FLDS, shows an armored personnel carrier on property neighboring the Yearning For Zion ranch near Eldorado, Texas. Photos of a state raid on a West Texas polygamist sect show law enforcement officers, looking for a teenage girl and evidence of sexual abuse, came prepared for an armed confrontation.

(AP Photo/Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints)

Tela Mange, a state Department of Public Safety spokeswoman, said officers are trained to protect themselves.

“Whenever we serve a search warrant, no matter where or when, we are always as prepared as possible so we can ensure the operational safety of the officers serving the warrant, as well as the safety of those who are on the property in question,” Mange said.

Notice how she puts that. The safety of the people on the property is thrown in almost as an afterthought. Remember - the cop’s life is always worth more than anyone else’s (except the ruling class to whom they serve first and foremost). Amadou Diallo, Lisa Gotbaum and countless other victims of the “protect and serve” class learned that to their and their family’s sorrow.

Looks like the Texas yokels were prepared for another Waco-style confrontation. Seems like they may have been disappointed they didn’t get one. How violent were the sect members:

Parker said rumors have circulated since the 1950s that the FLDS would respond with violence to threats on their way of life. “It’s never been substantiated at all. Nobody who knows these people could possibly believe that,” he said.

“It’s not in their nature,” he said.

Parker said that if there was any suggeston that the FLDS would respond to police with violence, there would have been a cache of firearms found during the raid. “Instead they responded by singing and praying,” he said.

While there were hunting rifles at the ranch, search warrants filed in district court in Tom Green County don’t show that police seized any weapons.

No weapons seized.

Hmmmm.

Stacey Warde in CommonDreams

The other great thing about fascism is its capacity for supporting, even indulging, denial on the most massive scale: “We don’t torture. …You can trust us. …If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about….”

Our phones are tapped, elections rigged, bogus wars planned and executed, real and imagined enemies created, and police acquire more powers to intimidate and harass while more rights are taken away from citizens.

Churches pray for the end of the world and offer their children as sacrifices for the war machine, and collude with the government colluding with the corporations and financial institutions - promising blood, anything, for National Security.

Soon, we who protest have been silenced, or marginalized. The Supreme Leader has the right to put anyone he considers a threat - U.S. citizens included - into prison indefinitely, without access to an attorney, or the right to confront his accusers, merely by declaring that person an “enemy combatant.”

The whole drama and theater of the fascist play draws its action from the government wedding itself to corporate interests - in the U.S., a nationalist religious fervor is thrown into the mix to make it all palatable.

Eventually, we all do what we are told - or suffer the consequences. The real danger of fascism is its creep factor. It creeps up on us, and before we know it, we’ve become model citizens in the state that runs secret prisons and gulags around the world. We accept, approve and justify state-sponsored kidnapping, torture and preemptive war. Fascism is creepy.

Historically, by the time citizens realize what’s happened to the country they love, it’s too late.

Like many others, I’ve known for a long time that America has changed. Its legacy of freedom has morphed into something grossly distorted, something the founders of this nation would not have recognized.

What can I add to this fine essay?

Except to say that in the end, we will get what we deserve.

Do your patriotic duty and go out and buy some expensive crap you don’t need. NOW! That’s liberty, by golly, that’s freedom.

Well here we are.

Yesterday, thanks to the George W. Bush Economic Miracle, the general state of the local and national economy and the fact that Americans are reading less and less, I canceled my health insurance.

With that, I joined the 45 million who are well and truly fucked in the Land of the Free should something medically happen to us.

Of course Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the ‘bootstrap’ crowd could care less. The mere fact that you haven’t gamed the system for enough money is proof positive you lack enough moral gumption to be entitled to health care.

To those people I say: fuck you.

Here I am, a small business owner, having given my town something most of them said they desperately wanted: offered a great product selection for a great price, advertised, got involved in my community and, in general, made my store a welcoming and attractive asset to my community.

And one year later, I have to drop my health insurance.

And why not? I pay $150 every month for a policy which pays nothing for drugs and doctor visits but has a $10,000 ( you read that right) yearly deductible.

I love this post from Big Ass Belle

Seriously, our health care system is totally fucked. The “self administered medication” in question? Two 2.5 mg Percocets I took in recovery, post-surgery. How could it possibly cost $72.63 for a nurse to shake two pills from her bottle, walk five steps, hand me a cup of water and two tablets.

My insurance company will undoubtedly bargain this down significantly. But what of those who have no insurance? How can any single uninsured working person possibly afford to pay $8,900 for the facility fee

George Bush’s solution is “health care savings accounts,” whereby American can surely pay for . . . I don’t know, maybe a typical prescription which, without insurance, generally runs at least $100 and often as much as $400-500. With the US savings rate in the negative, can anyone besides the ultra rich save money at a pace which could easily cover an unexpected health event like this one? only for a 90 minute outpatient surgery? That’s not even counting the pathologist’s fee, the anesthesiologist, the surgeon’s hefty pound of flesh, or any of the assorted radiology or lab fees that always fill the mailbox after an encounter with a hospital. Ninety minutes in the hospital. Ninety. Minutes. Two. Pills. $8,900 and more to come. It’s madness.

George W. Bush could CARE LESS about the people who can’t afford it. He’s the president of the “have mores” you understand. If you can’t afford health insurance or medical care, it’s probably your own moral failing and you deserve to die so the ‘winners’ can access the resources they deserve.

Well, I don’t know how much longer I can run my bookstore in this environment. I talked today with the lady who runs the bakery next door. She hasn’t had health insurance in years. And my friend who brought his fossil collection to display in my store for the local kids - who drives a bus for Geauga County and plows snow in the winter, doesn’t have health insurance and neither does his wife.

If I get another surprise medical condition, like my January 2006 gall bladder surgery, I’d lose my store to the $25,000 medical cost anyway.

I worked for the Federal government for 11 years. I have re-employment eligible rights. Which means if I work at it enough, I can probably get back into the US civil service which I left BECAUSE I didn’t feel it was fair to get paid $35,000 yearly of taxpayer’s money to lightly shuffle paper for 8 hours a day. And get all that paid annual and sick leave and health insurance and job security and, and, and. . .

I can’t believe what 11 years in the private sector have done to my attitude. Now if I could get back into the civil service I would feel no compunction whatsoever when I get my paycheck and bennies. None. The little guy, minus the rich family, cannot make it in the current economic climate. And a progressive who speaks his mind can’t make it in the so-called ‘liberal’ media.

Work somewhere else? I’m 45 with the dreaded “gaps” in my resume. Good luck with that. At least the Federal civil service forgives and I’d get credited back my previous 11 years.

So give me my back my little cubicle and computer and I’ll get back to it. I’ll massage my dashed dreams with wondering what I’ll do again with all that paid time off, affordable health insurance, and job security.

And Chardon loses the bookstore and another light goes out in the American heartland. Another bookstore, another small business (among many hanging by a hair in my town), another dream dies.

And a few miles away, blissfully unaware consumers wander aimlessly through the aisles at Wal-Mart.

The American Dream is ending - for all of us.

The more I read from Chris Floyd, the more I appreciate the writing of Harlan Ellison, especially the short story referenced in the title.

What would Jefferson have said about all of this?

Who cares, comes the reply from the great American void.

It seems incredible what we have seen come down in the Bush presidency. The question, after reading Floyd’s article, is why? What has happened to the American people that we have come to tacitly accept our own powerlessness to change any of this?

I hold that it has been by design that Americans work longer and harder so that they will be too worn down to really concern themselves with matters of government.

Also, people tend to have lost faith in the power of elections and government to really do anything for them. I think that a lifetime of inculcation in our rapacious predatory capitalist system has made people believe that corporations really run the country and that we are powerless to do anything about it. Speak up and welcome to the American Gulag: the unemployment line.

We do really feel that the only real sin in America is to be jobless and/or poor. The terror of losing everything is greater, to many people, than the terror of imprisonment. It’s easier to face a few years in jail if you know, like many corporate crooks do, that upon release there’s a numbed Swiss or offshore bank account waiting to make everything better.

People also understand that post 9-11, if you complain about anything at all at an airport, there’s an offhand chance you may land up dead. If you appear a bit weird or out of the ordinary at an airport, or at other ’security-conscious’ places, you may also find yourself under arrest, imprisoned or dead for certain behaviors. Not to mention suddenly finding yourself on a ‘no fly list’ or suddenly being interrogated at the Canadian border or upon re-entry to the US.

After all, there’s the tried and true politically motivated IRS audit that has been, through the years used on the enemies of various American administrations.

People understand that if a President can disappear anyone he wishes at Guantanamo (if they’re lucky) or some Romanian secret CIA torture camp (if they’re not so lucky) or rendered to Syria or Egypt (if they REALLY don’t like you), then with a stroke of the pen they could conceivably do it to you too.

Hell, now under InfraGuard, you have to wonder if your boss is reporting on your break-table political discussions and, is secretly waiting for a national emergency to have the excuse to shoot you.

We all remember our moms telling us to keep our heads down and our noses clean and get a little something for ourselves. This seems to be the American mantra. Imagine if it had been the American mantra in 1776. Actually, we might have done better to remain British colonies in the long run: we might have had national health insurance by now and caused a lot less grief around the world.

In any case, everything Floyd writes, in his usual imitable self, is spot on. But even Floyd asks the question of his own writing and conclusions: so what of it?

But ultimately, on the ground, it will not change a thing. The sharpest truth, shouted like a trumpet blast, will not wake the sleepwalkers now. Nothing has pierced the shadows and fog so far, nothing has roused their moral sense, their legal sense, their political sense; nothing has stirred them to take action against the torture, the secret prisons, the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, the ludicrous farce and deadly tyranny of the “Unitary Executive” cult — and the never-ending act of mass murder and rape that is the war in Iraq. Will they stir now to stop another war crime in Iran?

No, it’s obvious now that we must drink this bitter cup to the dregs. The sleepwalkers have encompassed us all in their nightmare. And how terrible, how terrible will be the awakening.

So even this political progressive has to ask the next obvious question: should we put ourselves out there for a people that don’t seem to want to be saved? After losing two career media jobs for speaking out, I’m getting a little tired of trying to wake up and educate a people that don’t care enough about their own children or posterity to give a damn.

Apparently Jack Cafferty touched a nerve

McClatchy

Earlier this week, the state Xinhua news agency called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “disgusting.” And on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu lambasted a CNN commentator, Jack Cafferty, for his “vicious” commentary on China.

“We solemnly request that CNN, and Cafferty himself, take back the malicious remarks and apologize to the Chinese people,” Jiang said at a news briefing.

Protests plaguing a global Olympic torch relay, along with mounting criticism of China’s handling of domestic unrest by Tibetans, have embittered many Chinese. As foreign leaders discuss whether to boycott Olympic opening ceremonies Aug. 8, Chinese internet sites are replete with their own mounting calls for boycotts — of foreign goods.

The mood has definitely soured here as the nation prepares to host its biggest international event ever. Angry nationalism has replaced what had been festive anticipation as government officials to lash out at foreign critics, trying to stay ahead of public resentment _ even fury _ that foreigners may spoil the Summer Olympics with what some see as unwarranted criticism.

Several foreign journalists, including correspondents for USA Today and The Times of London, say they have received death threats.

snip

Cafferty, whose CNN commentaries are invariably acerbic, sounded off on China on the program The Situation Room April 9. He said the United States imports “their junk with the lead paint” and their “poisoned pet food” while losing factory jobs to China, a country run by “the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.”

Jiang, the ministry spokeswoman, said Cafferty “used his microphone to denigrate China and Chinese people” and that his remarks constitute racism.

The firestorm began among angry Chinese immigrants in the United States, who launched an online petition drive (www.petitiononline.com/cnncaff/petition.html) to protest Cafferty’s remarks. Coverage quickly crossed into China, where citizens had already launched an internet campaign against CNN, accusing it of biased coverage in mid-March of an uprising of ethnic Tibetans demanding greater freedom.

A Chinese “anti-CNN” website contained plenty of vitriolic remarks against Cafferty by Tuesday.

“Nobody should ever take this hyperthyroid rooster too seriously,” said one commenter, adding that Cafferty is prone to “anti-Chinese diarrhea.”

Hyperthyroid rooster?

Someone really needs to teach the Chinese how to properly insult people. Most Westerners, when they read these kind of insults, laugh out loud because they’re funny. They’re not terribly insulting at all but perhaps they think so.

At any rate, if this helps destroy the Summer Olympics and embarrass China, so much the better. The whole idea of an Olympic Game in Beijing was a bad to begin with and can only end badly at this point.

Of course the fact that the Chinese ban my and Matt Adams’ podcast does not mean I’m bitter at all.

Of course not. I’m just a working class white guy from small town Ohio. I’m clinging to my gun right now.

Anyway, these are still the same goons who committed the slaughter of Tiannemen Square. They were doing fine in ‘89 and they’re doing fine today. I have to say, Jack Cafferty does have a way about him, however.

But the bottom line is as long as US multinationals can make a buck off cheap Chinese imports, this sort of nonsense will continue. It’s just fun to see the mandarins in Beijing spin like turret lathes in righteous indignation.

Reprinted from The Washington Post’s Day in Pictures and commented on in HuffPo by Michael Shaw:

I can’t help contrasting this shot from yesterday’s WAPO Day in Photos with the White House photo gallery’s endless wall paper of military spouses as loyal, brave and beaming (my note: how many of those were officer’s wives? There is a difference).

Sure, it’s just one shot. But the symbolism here conveys a fundamental erosion of the “stiff upper lip.” As well, it speaks — in the media sphere — to the kind of unsustainable emotional strain on our troops that military officials have been warning of more urgently lately. (As a metaphor, perhaps the brick wall also has something to contribute on that point.)

According to the caption, we see a military wife comforting her twins this past Saturday as their father leaves home for his second deployment to Iraq. I don’t know how old these children were when their father shipped out the first time (me: and this will be their image of their father from their formative years). With the (illegal) occupation entering its sixth year, however, these two are likely apprehending the reality of this mindless war in a deeper way that they were before.

Still, there’s an aspect of the photo, and the boy, that troubles me far more than the tragic expressiveness — the “come back; touch me; don’t go” — of the boy’s hand.

You know, I used to listen to a lot of right-wing Christian blatherings about “family values.” Well, here you go. Let’s tear daddy away AGAIN for another tour in the $3 Trillion Dollar Oil War. What would be even more pertinent for the family values crowd is to see a MOTHER also leaving her children to go fight in George W. Bush’s slaughter pen, which countless single moms have had to do, lest they land up in Leavenworth.

Family values. Right.

And let’s talk about the complete and utter destruction of millions of Iraqi families, bombed shot or otherwise had family members killed BECAUSE WE INVADED THEIR COUNTRY. I KNOW we don’t want to deal with that because, well, they’re Iraqis; they’re not worth as much as Americans. And they’re so UNGRATEFUL for all the “freedom” we’ve brought them in the last FIVE years.

You know, the spirit of sacrifice might have been more worthwhile if daddy was actually PROTECTING and DEFENDING AMERICA which he is NOT. He is fighting both a resource war for oil AND a rearguard action to protect Israeli and American business and geopolitical interests in the middle east. We have stuck a baseball bat in the hornet’s nest of the Middle East and are shocked, SHOCKED that so many Muslims, many of whom were neutral once, now have grown to hate us.

We despoil their lands, seize their natural resources, spit on their holy books, kill their women and children and we actually expect them to be GRATEFUL.

And so daddy goes to do the bidding of imperialist warmongers, who, even now as we sit here sipping our lattes and reading blogs, are plotting to visit death and destruction upon the Iranians, a nation made up of mostly young adults who actually look up to and admire America.

Until, of course, the first bombs drop.

‘lYou know what the biggest idiotic rational for the war in Iraq is? That if we don’t fight them over there THEY’LL FOLLOW US HOME.

Seriously. The next 777s to Kennedy Airport will be full of them, checking in at customs. Right.

Well perhaps they’ll just swarm across our unprotected Mexican border, made unprotected BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. Why? Because one of the main jobs of Bush’s corporate honchos is to utterly destroy the American middle class (which the unfortunate family in the above photo probably thinks they belong to). And you can’t do that unless you allow millions of illegals into this country to be your clam shuckers, nannies, maids and gardeners. Gotta keep the bottom line on Wall Street up and we can’t do that hiring those Americans who actually have the temerity to demand a living wage.

And if the terrorists saunter across the Rio Grande, well, that’s the price we pay for our predatory market capitalism. President Bush doesn’t care, why should you?

So they’ll FOLLOW US HOME because the BUSINESS CONSERVATIVES WILL ALLOW THEM.

After all, if you need another coalescing event (like 9-11) to get the sheeple to give up even the tattered remains of their Constitutional rights, you’ll need to allow those who may assist in the deed in the country, right?

Makes the sacrifice of the family in the photo seem all the more tragic, doesn’t it?

That and the crumbling national economy, the failing dollar, the bankrupt US Treasury, the housing meltdown, the skyrocketing prices of food and fuel, the collapsing educational and health care system, etc. etc.

It’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?

Daddy, what are we REALLY fighting for?