By day we looked up and it was blue, with the sun in it and, dimly, the moon. When the sun descended, blue became black, and the moon and stars were moving in it. We called it whatever we called it in our divers tongues. Sky. We see it still, but differently now because of what we have learned.

Some of us once saw the stars as holes in the sky where light came through. Some of us located sun, moon, stars and planets on several concentric spheres. The sun, we learned, does not revolve around the earth, nor does anything else except the moon. The sky is not an object and the blue is something that happens to the light. Now we know: moon around our earth, planets, asteroids, comets, etc. around our sun, stars around the galactic center, stars with planets in orbit, galaxies further than we could once imagine. We have not finished learning about these things; we are at the beginning of learning.

We began a little while ago to learn that the earth is indeed surrounded by concentric spheres, not blue or black: the ionosphere, parts of which reflect some radio waves, making them available beyond the line of sight; the ozone layer that keeps out harmful radiation, except what comes in through the holes; the magnetosphere with its radiation belts; the layers of the atmosphere, troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere; and so on.

Some of us and some of our machines have penetrated and gone beyond earth's sky.

This is a metaphor for truth, and an example of it.

Rutherford B. Hayes kind of out maneuvered poor Tilden in the presidential election of 1876. There have been those who claim there was a 'deal' struck with the South that would end Reconstruction. That in return for putting a Republican back in the White House following the second term of President Grant, the troops would be pulled out of the South permanently.

Personally, I feel that the repubs just wanted to get back to 'business' anyway. It was Grant and some other moral forces in his administration that had followed through on the promises of the Radical Republicans  before and after Lincoln that kept the old Confederacy from reinslaving the African Americans.

There had been Black Congressmen elected to office in the South. Judges included ex slaves. There was a real change a comin' and it all vanished in a flash.

The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, with the intention (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) of substantially limiting the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States. The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Coast Guard is exempt from the Act during peacetime. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

The purpose of the Posse Comitatus Act ostensibly was to get the Federales out of the South. But it also served to curb presidential power per his position as Commander In Chief of the Armed Forces.

WWI veterans were camping out at our capital in 1932. There was quite a protest over the terrible way they had been treated by their country. It was in the midst of the depression before FDR.

MacArthur was the Army Chief  of Staff and spouted that this protest represented a communist uprising.

Conspicuously led by MacArthur, Army troops (including Major George S. Patton, Jr.) formed infantry cordons and began pushing the veterans out, destroying their makeshift camps as they went. Although no weapons were fired, cavalry advanced with swords drawn, and some blood was shed. By nightfall, hundreds had been injured by gas (including a baby who died), bricks, clubs, bayonets, and sabers. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peopleevents/pandeAMEX89.html

Although many Americans applauded the government's action as an unfortunate but necessary move to maintain law and order, most of the press was less sympathetic. "Flames rose high over the desolate Anacostia flats at midnight tonight," read the first sentence of the "New York Times" account, "and a pitiful stream of refugee veterans of the World War walked out of their home of the past two months, going they knew not where."

The public appeared to 'buy it'.  A strong press demurred.

But here is the quiz of the day.

Who do you think recently desired to settle 130 years of settled law and send the Armed Forces into action on our soil?

Well, if I had never read the following article I would have guessed Dick Cheney.

And guess what?  I would have been correct.

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials. Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

w demurred. Thank the good Lord. (really blesses himself this time)

Now the second part of my quiz would be:

On what legal basis did our ex Vice-President rely upon to buttress his wish for a Military State?

Why our favor OLC including Yoo and Gonzales and all the boys with a Memorandum of Law:

 "The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States," the memorandum said.

The memorandum -- written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty -- was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president's authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/25detain.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes

If you think we are all in deep doo doo now, think about how bad we could be off at this point in time.

Still, at least one high-level meeting was convened to debate the issue, at which several top Bush aides argued firmly against the proposal to use the military, advanced by Mr. Cheney, his legal adviser David S. Addington and some senior Defense Department officials.

Oh and there is our friend Addington again. Isn't he a picture of patriotism. I have despised this asshat since his first appearance on cable news. He has testified before Congress and shown nothing but distain for our entire Constitutional Government.

To be fair to w's administration:

Among those in opposition were Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Michael Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department's criminal division.

And there, by the way, is Robert Mueller. As time goes on I have more and more respect for this guy. If you recall he was the one who ordered to guards standing in front of Ashcroft's hospital bed to prevent Gonzales and Card from entering until the acting Attorney General showed up.  Remember w was seeking extension of an illegal order for wiretaps without warrant. But that is another story.

Director Robert Mueller along with the then Acting Attorney General James B. Comey offered to resign from office in March 2004 if the White House overruled a Department of Justice ruling which concluded that warrantless domestic wiretapping was unconstitutional.[8] Attorney General John D. Ashcroft refused to intervene in attempts by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to waive this ruling and permit the domestic warrantless eavesdropping program to proceed. Former President George W. Bush ultimately gave his support to making changes to the program on March 12, 2004, thereby defusing a crisis there.[8]

I know this is healthcare day. A lot of blogs on this issue.

But this story was another example of how close we all were as American Citizens to living under a military dictatorship. With no Constitutional Rights whatsoever.  It underlines to me anyway, what a precarious world we really live in. Almost as if all our rights are only on paper and how any yahoo or Yoo anyway, can take a scissors and destroy all our assumptions about democracy, and divided government.

That is local, State and Federal Governments. Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches of all those governments. Checks and balances as they say.

And we could have all woken up one morning and seen a couple of  Army Tanks outside our homes. I can picture a nice Captain  crawling out of a tank and greeting the curious neighbors. JUST KEEPING THE PEACE MAAM.

Everybody would indeed be so friendly. All the cable channels would begin with a Pledge of Allegiance, carefully keeping the phrase 'Under God.'

After reading all of these health blogs over the last month it really strikes me that there is another underlying story going on here.

We are witnessing Democracy at work. Thousands upon thousands of pages of bills and addendums and appendices are floating around. Our representatives are arguing and arm twisting and sometimes ranting and raving for change. Of course the repubs are sitting on the sidelines telling us how Democracy never will work and real change for the people is only a dream.

I don't know. I just was struck by this New York Times Article. It really scared the bejeesus out of me.

Cheney and Yoo and Addington really represent the true Enemies of the People. An extremely evil group of men who would undue 230 years of real democratic progress in this country.

They should be prosecuted for what they have done.

But the real story of some of the things THEY WANTED TO DO must be aired so that the people understand what catastrophes might have actually occurred.

I will tell you this. As long as Barack Obama is sitting in the oval office, I believe, deep down inside my very soul, that a military coupe is out of the question.

Four years, eight years from now, WHO KNOWS?

The first stop on this road is the original police report, and this is the section that directly recounts the arrest.

There are several critical elements in this account which bring it into conformity with the "definition" of disorderly conduct, which comes in three layers:

1. Statutes
2. Case law
3. Model code

The most important layer is the model code, which is likely to be totally unfamiliar to almost everybody, so we might as well start there.

The Model Penal Code is a monstrous document designed to "save the states from themselves" by preventing "consitutional infirmities" in state law, as in COMMONWEALTH vs. KENNETH M. LOPIANO. (60 Mass. App. Ct. 723)

"The statute authorizing prosecutions for disorderly conduct, G. L. c. 272, § 53, has been saved from constitutional infirmity by incorporating the definition of 'disorderly' contained in § 250.2(1)" of the Model Penal Code (1980)."

So the law against disorderly conduct in Massachusetts is probably constitutional, because it follows the definition of disorderly conduct in the Model Penal Code...

Model Penal Code s. 250.2: "(1) Disorderly Conduct. Offense Defined. A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he:

"(a) engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior; or

"(b) makes unreasonable noise or offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display, or addresses abusive language to any person present; or

"(c) creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.

"'Public' means affecting or likely to affect persons in a place to which the public or a substantial group has access . . . ."

But this language does not appear in the Massachusetts statute under the authority of which disorderly conduct is ordinarily prosecuted in Massachusetts, and a reasonable person might ask how the mere existence of the Model Penal Code can save the Massachusetts statute from "constitutional infirmity."

The relevant Massachusetts statute (G. L. c. 272, § 53) is a relic of the colonial era, and it sounds more like something out of The Old Curiosity Shop than a modern statute...

Section 53. Common night walkers, common street walkers, both male and female, common railers and brawlers, persons who with offensive and disorderly acts or language accost or annoy persons of the opposite sex, lewd, wanton and lascivious persons in speech or behavior, idle and disorderly persons, disturbers of the peace, keepers of noisy and disorderly houses, and persons guilty of indecent exposure may be punished by imprisonment in a jail or house of correction for not more than six months, or by a fine of not more than two hundred dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

This baroque language is either explicated or further confused by a mass of definitions and qualifications in a row of subsections, but...

Faced with this monstrosity, judges in Massachusetts have resorted to the useful fiction that G. L. c. 272, § 53 is a hideously clumsy paraphrase of the Model Penal Code at s. 250.2: (1), which I quoted above, and G. L. c. 272, § 53 has been saved from "constitutional infirmity" by interpretation rather than legislative revision.

In other words, constitutional challenges to G. L. c. 272, § 53 are avoided by de facto adherence to the Model Penal Code s. 250.2: (1).

Now it makes sense to ask if the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. matches the criteria of the Model Penal Code s. 250.2: (1), and it seems to me that the most significant sub-section is 250.2: "(1)(b)...

(b) makes unreasonable noise or offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display, or addresses abusive language to any person present...

If you believe the police report (and this is an essay about matters of law rather than matters of fact), then Professor Gates probably satisfied the criteria of Model Penal Code s. 250.2: (1) by shouting insults at the cop from his front porch, and even though the front porch itself is not a public place, it was sufficiently close to the public sidewalk and street so that "persons in a place to which the public or a substantial group has access" were affected.

That's not the end of the story, and there is never an end to any story involving a charge of disorderly conduct. For example...

Mulvey's conviction was overturned in COMMONWEALTH vs. JOSEPH MULVEY because the location was insufficiently public...

The defendant's mother's property was set back off the road and was surrounded by a variety of different types of fencing. There was a seventy-five to 100 foot long driveway between the road and the house. Entry to the driveway was through a large gate, composed of eight foot high chain link fencing. Green slats had been threaded through the chain link, making it difficult to see through.

The appellate court accordingly overturned Mulvey's conviction, but Professor Gates' house is unfenced and adjacent to Ware Street in Cambridge, and the charge of disorderly conduct probably couldn't have been dismissed on the basis of Mulvey, because...

It also is possible that behavior occurring on purely private property may be shown to affect or be likely to affect persons in an adjacent or nearby "place to which the public or a substantial group has access," Model Penal Code § 250.2, such that a disorderly conduct charge would be appropriate.

            Recently, a new theme has been emerging; Anonymous has drawn enough attention to itself as to warrant critical analysis of the group. This is going beyond the Scientologist vs. Anonymous flame-war that has been running for sometime and looks at the techniques that Anonymous has been employing and its success or lack thereof.

            Jwmadison's article proposes hyperbolically that Anonymous must have been established by the Church of Scientology's press department for the effect that Anonymous has had. There are at least 800,000 hits for 'scientology anonymous' on Google and now the Church is capitalizing on that with AdSense. That is a lot of work that the Church couldn't have accomplished without the help of Anonymous.

            Curiously, Anonymous members are utterly incapable of seeing what they have done even when it is clearly outlined for them.

            Perhaps, to adopt one of their own 'tinfoil-hat' theories, they have been brainwashed to blindness. According to Anonymous members 'brainwashing' is a simple and routine procedure familiar to all Scientologist's and many Anonymous members claim to have been very high ranking in the Church and so would be accomplished brainwashers, or whatever they call practitioners of the technique.

            This would explain why many Anonymous postings are incomprehensible jargon laden nonsense; some members were left in the spin cycle too long at a brainwashing party.

            More likely, Anonymous simply doesn't have a response to this or seemingly any criticism as they are unaccustomed to anyone outside their feud with the Scientologist's not blindly taking their side. It's likely had they not co-opted the Guy Faulkes' masks from the popular movie 'V for Vendetta' they would be completely unknown to anyone not connected to their little spat. I certainly wouldn't have heard of them.

Two schools of thought, old school and new school got into an argument:

NS: "Where is the outrage?" 

OS: "Outrage?! You won't get one thing accomplished with anger and outrage. People who know, who have actually made a difference do so in calm, measured ways."

NS: "Right. You mean the Big Change from 'Bad' to 'Worse?' Those are the only recent changes I can see. What, precisely, has improved?"

OS: (crickets chirping)

Color this chicken unimpressed with the old school. Maybe it is time to be really, really, really, angry. It's not like things are getting better. They're actually falling apart.

Just sayin'. 

Principle 4. The President's plan is The American Plan it fits our principles and serves our people. It represents patriotism at its finest.

The American Plan allows you the freedom to keep your current health plan or choose the American Plan a different one. It is fair in that it allows everyone to afford excellent care. And it allows us to demonstrate in the most visceral way that Americans care about and for their fellow citizens. The last sentence would appeal to progressives and liberals, but likely not people who look only to their own self-interest. They also don't place much stock in fairness.

Principle 5. The American Plan is a doctor-patient plan. You and your doctor determine your treatment. There is no HMO bureaucracy standing between you and the care you get.

Principle 6. The American Plan relieves oppressive HMO government. Right now HMO's govern your life. Unaccountable HMO bureaucrats decide what treatments you can be "authorized" for and they function to say No to care whenever they can justify it. They make you wait too long, and limit your choice of doctors, clinics, and hospitals. HMO's are oppressive forms of government. The American Plan diminishes bureaucrats' control over your life. Your American government could act only as a bursar, paying your bills and making sure there is no fraud. Your treatment is up to you and your doctor.

Principle 7. The American Plan provides care instead of denying it.  Why do HMO's have a high administrative cost - 15 to 20 percent or more? They spend money to justify denying you the care you need and all too often delaying care so much that you are harmed by the delay. The American Plan is there to provide you care, not deny or delay it. Its administrative costs would be low, about 3 percent. It would save money.

Principle 8. The American Plan costs less and does more. HMO's are big spenders, not on your health, but on administrative costs, commercials to tout their plans, and profits to investors. As much as 20 to 30% of what you pay does not go to your care. In The American Plan, 97% of what you pay goes for your care. It's a better deal for you and for our country. There's good information in the strike-out passage, but the danger is too much information can bounce off.

Principle 9. The American Plan helps primary care doctors. HMO's put the squeeze on primary care doctors and have created assembly line medicine. HMO's require doctors to take too many patients per hour, more than they can effectively treat. And they pay doctors as little as possible per patient, so that the HMO's make greater profits, while your doctor loses out -- and you may lose your doctor. As a result, Many thousands of primary care doctors have left their profession. The American Plan will bring them back the primary care doctors, paying them what they are worth, and letting them practice medicine rather than deal with mountains of paperwork.instead working on an assembly line.

Principle 10. The American Plan will make prescription drugs cheaper. Why? Because they can be purchased in greater volume and at a discount. No longer will Americans have to go to Canada to buy their meds, or order them from other countries. No longer will the cost of medicine threaten to bankrupt older Americans on a fixed income.

Here's a link to find viewing times and the sky area to scan for your area:

www.heavens-above.com

Under configutations, choose either register and login, or select from data base; they will allow you to select your town for viewing times and location.  After that, go back to Satellites, click on ISS, and a page will open to tell you when and where to look.  The shuttle is docked there, obviously, so it is even larger than usuall.  It is 220 miles above the earth, very bright, and it is hard to believe how fast it seems to travel.    Remember that you subract 12 hours from military time, and take note of how many degrees above the horizon you should be scanning.  Several nights this week are shown, in case tonight is cloudy where you are. 

It is so nice to have something up there to watch; and along with it you will see the stars and planets and stardust...good perspective, especially just now; eh wot? 

Okay, it has been over a week since Walter Cronkite passed away.

Our Main Stream Media reality is that a professional comedian is now considered the Most Trusted Newscaster by more Americans than is any professional (real) newscaster:

 http://www.timepolls.com/hppolls/archive/poll_results_417.html

I would like to think that if I am a David Gregory, a Charles Gibson, a Katie Couric, a Chuck Todd or someone of that station, that I would be having a serious crisis of identity. I would like to think that if I were  a professional in the profession of broadcast journalism that I would recognize this poll as a clarion call to inward examination.

Our MSM's reaction:  nary a peep.

Come on folks, you aren't going to take this lying down are you?

It's so interesting to me how so many are so quick to make non-fact based
declarations based only on assumptions on the Gates issue.

None of us were there. None of us KNOW the words, nuances and/or actions of
any of the principals. All we can do is assume and choose to use our
assumptions as a springboard to blame and/or support one over the other.

When choosing to do this - we are making unfounded preconceived judgments
based not on this specific issue but on our own perceptions and
opinions, not on reality founded in factual knowledge.  Thus are the seeds of
irrational prejudices sown!

Dare I ask, no matter which assumption we make in this case, isn't it just
another form of airing our own biases?   Giving credence to media hype?

What if the policeman had been black and Gates white? Would that change
your perception/assumption? What if.........ah, too many to list.

Is it possible Gates, due to his past experiences, projected malice where
in this instance there was none?  Is it possible that both were right? And
wrong? 

We'll never really know - we can only assume! Make irrational rationales!

In my opinion, none of us have any valid right to make any judgments in
this matter, because we do not have factual knowledge of all that transpired.
We do not know the individuals nor their motivations.  

And perhaps most important, it only serves to support the negative
agendas of those who strive to destruct, not construct!

Now, that said, can we please use our time and energy in working towards healthcare reform and other positive issues that we can   utilize facts to promote and make informed decisions about? 

(Partially posted in comment form on other posts.)

apparently a significant part of the financial future of the country is being determined:

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration scrambled on Friday to defend major elements of its plan to overhaul the nation's financial regulatory system in the face of significant criticism from lawmakers, the financial services industry, and even senior regulators whose authorities would be eliminated under the proposal.

A turf war among some of the most powerful regulators in Washington, which has played out largely behind the scenes in the last few months, burst into the open at a House hearing. It featured disagreements over two cornerstones of the administration's financial regulation plan -- a new consumer protection agency to take over the functions now performed by the Federal Reserve, and a greater role for the Fed in overseeing large institutions that could pose systemic risks if they become troubled....

continued @ Regulators Spar for Turf in Financial Overhaul,
by Stephen Labaton for the July 25 New York Times.

A common argument between conservative and  liberal is whether more and tougher law enforcement is the best approach to reducing crime, or whether some societal/governmental intervention is appropriate. In other words, conservatives say society can merely expect personal responsibility, and enforce the law when that fails. Same for gun crime, same for exploitative mortgage-sales practices, and same for terrorism---"Liberals want to use psychotherapy."

For Professor Gates, it would have easily avoided a problem to be subservient and polite, ignoring his feeling of being oppressed. This is what Chris Rock humorously advises in this video clip: NYPD Training Video

Read more »

Last night on Bill Moyers Journal, two helathcare journalists,Trudy Lieberman and Marcia Angel, M.D., discussed the current plan, and expressed great skepticism about the true results of a plan based on the current system.  Angell's position was that throwing money at the current system is wrong, and that in the end any public plan will just be a dumping ground for the sickest patients, won't control costs, and is doomed to failure.  If you factor in that everyone will be mandated to get insured, either publicly or privately, a public plan won't be able to negotiate drug prices, etc.:  look out!  It sounds as though in order to placate a few Republicans and some Blue Dogs (woof!), the plan may be not all that beneficial.  If it costs a lot, then doesn't work well, single payer will be shelved forever.  Oh--plus, the public G-plan wouldn't even start until 2013 or something??

Here's the link   http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2009/07/diagnosing_proposals_for_healt.html

Here is former insurance exec Wendell Potter critiquing the public option...

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2009/07/assessing_a_public_option_for.html

This is so indicative of what has been going on for far too long in this country.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32131382/ns/business-us_business/

We have an economy that focuses on profit without regard to the underlying source of those profits. No matter if the idea of making a profit is related to actually producing something or through financial manipulation is of no concern.

There is a consequence to making money where the profit has nothing to do with actually producing goods and services that people can actually afford or even want.

This is a continuation of the general condition of the lie that over the long term is not sustainable. This lie is the central element of the financial collapse and of our failure in provisioning health care. The very thing that has been focused upon by economists for a long time now, inflation, has been selectively promoted in both of these industries. The value quotient of both of these has become wildly inflated and has lost any relationship to real economic activity.

Profit is the sole motivator of both of these contrived marketplaces and it has been achieved through straightforward price inflation. The inflation though has had a uniquely directed goal. Every bit of the inflated pricing has been directed at ridiculous executive compensation and at highly focused derivatives products which uniquely place those profits in specific pockets and does almost nothing for shareholders, savers or the broader economy.

There is little coincidence that interest on savers 401k investments during the Bush years was flat as a pancake. What we had was an intentional manipulation of the investment marketplace that has been nothing less than a huge rip off and a transfer of wealth at the expense of taxpayers and the middle class. The Bush tax cuts were a part of this just as much as everything else that has occurred over this period. This activity is nothing less than a huge criminal enterprise that is still going on today.

Take it from a southern white guy.  Usually when a white guy says "this has nothing to do with race" it's a great big flashing "Danger Danger" sign that the speaker is about to say something incredibly racist. 

This time, however, it's got nothing to do with race.  And it has a lot less to do with "liberal" than with "libertarian."  At least for me. 

I am not excorcised about the Gates arrest because The Man was hassling a brother for doing nothing and my guilty white liberal heart bleeds for him. 

That's not to say I am insensitive or unsympathetic to what may (or may not) have set Gates off.  I get that black people, and in particular, black men, often, perhaps invariably, have a fraught relationship with the police.  I even recall the time it really hit home to me how bad it was.  During the very bad year of unemployment after I graduated from law school into the 1991 recession, I managed to total two cars in six months. My insurer tagged me as the at-fult party in both, cancelled my insurance and put me into the bad risk pool.  What with the joblessness and the injuries from the second wreck and the pittance I got for the second car and the impossibility of obtaining anything except very expensive liability coverage, I really didn't have any choice but to buy a cheap, POS heap.  Having been in two wrecks, I was also inclined to buy the biggest effing 70s Detroit battletank I could wrap around myself, at least until I got over the flashbacks. Even after I finally got a job, I had to keep that embarassing, baby pee yellow '77 Mercury main battle tank while I dug out from under the the worst of the debt, rebuilt my credit and waited for the wrecks to drop off my insurance record. 

So much for the background.  First year associates keep crappy hours sometimes, so one night, about two in the morning, I was driving the baby pee tank home after a long night rewriting a brief whose manifold deficiencies had been identified in red ink by older and wiser attorneys. I was boating down a deserted thoroughfare, my head still back in the office, and, suddenly, out of absofrakknglutely nowhere, I was surrounded by police cars and blue lights.  I hadn't been speeding.  I didn't have any burned out lights.  I hadn't swerved or driven erratically or run any lights.  As I pulled my car over, turned off the ignition and waited the seven or eight infuriating seconds it always took the heap's engine to stop chugging, I knew, with crystal clear certainty, that I had been pulled over for Driving While Black.  I thought that was funny. 

It didn't take a psychic to figure it out.  I was driving a gigantic 70's car with oxidized baby pee yellow paint in the wee hours of the morning. And I was doing this in a southern town where race relations were at a low ebb due to a couple of high-profile trials of black men accused of violent attacks (one fatal, one nearly so) on young white women.  So when I rolled down the window and the cops saw a young white professional in a suit and a silk tie behind the wheel, the change in their demeanor as they whiplashed through grim and on guard, to nonplussed, to partially concealed rueful amusement was comical.  They told me they'd been following me for two or three miles (yeah, I was that tired and distracted) and that I hadn't signaled when I turned onto the thoroughfare.  They told me to drive carefully and sent me on my way.  

And then, on the way home, it stopped being funny to me.  Failure to signal?  Are you kidding me?  In North Carolina, people use turn signals in two and only two situations:  when they're merging onto the Interstate (because otherwise, the folks on the Interstate might think your intention is to drive the car into the ditch to the right of the shoulder) and when they're in a dedicated turn lane (especially one with a a green arrow traffic light and a sign indicating that turns in the other direction are forbidden).  Other than those two scenarios, North Carolinians stubbornly resist committing themselves to a turn in advance.  Maybe they think its rude to go telling folks that they have to watch out for you 'cause maybe you're fixin' to turn, when there's a tiny chance you may change your mind before you get there.  Using a turn signal in this state anywhere other than a dedicated turn lane or an on-ramp is so rare that it is actually probable cause to pull you over and give you a field sobriety test. 

Those cops thought they saw a poor black man driving around at 2:00 in the morning and  equated that to a high likelihood of up-to-no-goodness in progress, so they used a completely bogus pretext to pull me over.  Which I already knew, but as I merged onto the Interstate (without signalling--I still wasn't fully assimilated in those days), it finally hit me, really hit me, what a lifetime's accumulation of episodes like that would do to me.  How much unreleased rage could build up over time as you had to swallow down your anger and fear and be polite to wary, taciturn cops who pulled you over for no reason other than to interrogate you about what you were up to and run your licence for warrants. 

So in my own Wilbur Whitebread walked in his brother-man's shoes for about .05 seconds way, I get the baggage that every police interaction with a black man carries. 

And that good white liberal's understanding of the plight of the black man has absolutely nothing to do with why the Gates arrest strikes a nerve with me and gets me pissed off enough to keep commenting long after I, and everyone else, should let it go. 

No, I am exorcised about this episode because THE GUY WAS IN HIS OWN GODDAMNED HOME.  Yes, he somehow managed to piss off the cop.  Yes, the cop in question may be the greatest cop who ever lived and the greatest humanitarian since Mohandas K. Ghandi.  Yes, he may have been a great cop and a great human being  who just was having a rare bad day and was really annoyed and Gates may have been acting like a complete asshole who was dumping a lot of grievance-laced dung on a solid guy who was just doing his job. I don't know any of that, but I am willing to assume it for the purpose of my point, which is that even if Gates was being a complete asshole to Sgt. Ghandi, he was being an asshole after his identity had been established, after it was clear that no crime or emergent situation was in progress and--this is the important part here, so follow along with me, please--IN HIS OWN GODDAMNED HOME.

Being an asshole, even to a cop, is not a crime.  And I'm not just saying that that's a thing that oughta be true.  As I noted in a comment on another post, under Massachusetts law, "to be disorderly, within the sense of the statute [that Gates was charged with violating], the conduct must disturb through acts other than speech; neither a provocative nor a foul mouth transgresses the statute." Commonwealth v. LePore, 40 Mass. App. Ct. 543, 546, 666 N.E.2d 152, 155 (1996).  Similarly, in Commonwealth v. Lopiano, 60 Mass. App. 723, 805 N.E.2d 522, 525 (2004), the Massachusetts Court of Appeals found no "violent or tumultuous behavior," where the defendant, "flailed his arms and shouted at the police" about alleged violations of his civil rights upon being informed he was being summonsed to court (but not arrested) for assault and battery.  (And, unlike Gates, Lopiano was in a public place.)

Further, I definitely don't want anyone to take away from this post that I've got a problem with cops per se.  My dad was a cop until I was about five, when he was asked to take some classes on fire fighting and start a fire department for the tiny (pop. 6000) town I grew up in.  Even after he became fire chief, the fire and police deparments faced each other on opposite sides of the garage that housed the fire trucks. Even as the town grew explosively and both departments grew busier, day in and day out, they shot the shit with each other between calls, played rough jokes on each other, ate each other's food, drank each other's coffee. 

And even after he moved on to other things, my Dad's long association with the local P.D. got me out of many a youthful misadventure without an arrest or a mortifying escort home.  Many's the time that a local cop looked at my license, put my name with my Dad's, asked me if he was his boy and then sent me on my way with an admonition to get home and stay out of trouble.  That probably would not have been enough, however, if not for my Dad's lessons in how to behave if you're stopped by the police.  He trained all of us from a very young age to be polite when them, to never give them a hint of attitude and always act respectful.  And I do respect cops as a rule.  I respect them immensely.  I appreciate them for keeping us safe.  I know how many of them are fundementally good-hearted men and women who hide a genuine desire to serve and protect behind a shield of machismo. I get that they have deal with a parade of stupid mopes so I don't have to.  I  appreciate that they encounter dangerous situations and deal with the stress created by not knowing which situations are going to turn out to be dangerous.  I particularly understand that they deal, day in and day out, with horrible situations that range from the merely emotionally draining to the utterly devestating, situations that would turn me into basket case in a week.   

And all that being true, I still think the important thing to recognize here is that even assuming Gates was being a complete turd--which I don't know--he was also an old man whoi walked with a cane who was, and--I hate to say it yet again, but people don't seem to be grasping the that this is the critical ssue here--HE WAS IN HIS OWN GODDAMNED HOME when he was arrested.  Sgt. Crowley's report clearly states that Gates' identify and ownership of the house had been established before he was arrested as had the lack of a crime to investigate.  And even if Gates followed the the cop outside, and even if he continued to berate the cops after he got out there, Gates was still, under the law, IN HIS OWN GODDAMNED HOME.  That's right, his porch and his sidewalk were still his home.  Contrary to what a lot of people here seem to believe, your porch, your front yard and all of the property surrounding the house, and not visably separated from it are, to use the legal term, "curtilage."  Curtilage is the area outside your home that the law treats as identical to the interior of your home for purposes of the Fourth and Fifth Amendements and for purposes of determining the scope of a police officer's license to be on your property. 

And for those saying that, even if he was legally deemed still in his home, Gates was properly arrested because he was disturbing the peace by taking the ruckus outside where people could hear and see it?  Please.  It's not like saintly Aunt May next door was disturbed in the quiet enjoyment of her tea and knitting by whatever Gates was saying to Sgt. Crowley.  Instead, she like everyone else in the vicinity, was already outside watching the show.  How do I know that?  Besides the fact that its in Crowley's report?  I know it because when a bunch of police cars pull up in front of your neighbor's house with the piercing, seizure inducing arrays of twenty or thirty blue and white flashing strobe lights and with all the unmistakable beeps and fascinating snatches of cryptic, but loud, radio chatter, it draws people out onto the street like iron filings to a magnet.  That magnetic effect is why they invented yellow police tape and the phrase "move along folks, show's over, nothing to see here."  If Gates' neighbors had any peace, it had already been disturbed long before Gates and Crowley took it outside, and, at that point, the neighbors were just spectators at the freakshow.  To suggest that whatever additional ruckus Gates might have added when he took his rant outside was distrubing to them is absurd.  If anything, it was just a bonus attraction to the show. 

What probably was disturbing to them, however, was seeing their aged neighbor cuffed, put in a patrol car and driven Downtown for booking simply because he was vigorously expressing his low opinion of the cops on his property.  He was arrested for pissing off an ordinarily good cop who had to know the arrest was bogus but who also knew he had the ability to humiliate and inconvenience the annoying old man, free of consequences. 

My Dad taught me to respect cops and to be respectful and polite to them.  He also, however, made it clear that one reason you do that isn't necessarily because you actually respect all of them, but, rather because some cops come to expect obsequiousness and instant obedience as their due, as their right.  And if the ones who think they're entitled to it don't get it, they can and will abuse their authority by running you in on some bullshit charge--disturbing the peace being a favorite--or, worse, busting your head.  Worse still, whether it's a bogus arrest or a busted head or both, they know that as long as their partner tells the same story, they will always beat you in court unless someone gets it on tape.  Hell, sometimes they win despite someone getting it on tape. Some of them feel that way all the time.  Most all of them feel that way once in a while. After all, they're human beings doing a tough, hard, dangerous job for society for too little pay.  Even for hte best of them, it would only be human to occaisionally feel underappreciated and to succomb to the temptation of the power they are given.    

And that, in a nutshell, is what bothers me about this episode. It's not about race, or about charges of racism, or about being a good liberal.  It's not about whether Sgt. Crowley is a good guy or a bad one or whether Gates was calm or over the top.  And it is most definitely not about old fights over whether charges of deliberate race-baiting during the primaries were justified or whether Obama cynically and mendaciously played the race card.  

Instead, it's about the simple, important, fact that, cops, by and large and most of the time, deserve our respect, but they are not entitled to it.

That easily overlooked distinction between "deserve" and "entitled" is critically important. That distinction is one of the sticks in the bundle of  important little things that, in the aggregate, distinguish a democracy from the authoritarian shitholes that were the plague of the 20th Century.  We, as free citizens, have a right to be secure in our homes and in our persons from unreasonable searches and arrests.  The sanctity of the home as a place where the individual is sovereign and the power of the state is limited is something precious.  It's a concept that our political forebears clawed away from the state, a tiny bit at a time, often at great cost, beginning with a bunch of bullying aristocrats who forced a bullying king to sign a Great Charter acknowledging some limitations on his own power. 

Within the confines of his home, including the curtilage, Gates had a right to be an asshole to anyone, cops included, as long as he wasn't threatening imminent physical harm.  This entire notion that he "deserved it" or "asked for it" because he should have known better than to mouth off to a cop is an implicit endorsement of the notion that cops are entitled to respect and cringing, obsequious obedience and, therefore, are justified in misusing the power entrusted to them if they don't get it. 

This is a minor episode.  It is a negligable, and lamentable, distraction from the most important and pressing issue of the day.  But the underlying principal is important.  At some point during the Reagan years, a lot of big-chilled boomers started dealing with their generational guilt over having called police officers just doing their very important and necessary jobs "pigs" and "fascists" by over-compensating.  In the 80s, a lot of them began trying to turn the notion that cops don't merely deserve respect, but rather are categorically entitled to it--merely by virtue of wearing the badge and irrespective of whether they individually deserve it--into a cultural norm. 

God forbid.  That attitude is unworthy of the citizens of a republic dedicated to the proposition that a person is entitled to his or her opinion.  It is one more step on the road that leads to a day when the microcosmic police states we've turned our airports into break out of the terminals and onto the streets of our cities.   

Today's cities are immense jails holding prisoners of fear, where fortresses masquerade as homes and armor as clothing.

A state of siege. Do not get distracted, do not let down your guard, do not ever trust, say the lords of the world, masters of impunity who rape the environment , kidnap countries, extort wages, and murder by throng. Watch out they warn, the bad guys are right there, huddled in miserable slums, chewing on their envy, resentfully licking their wounds.

The poor, the ragamuffins for all bondage, the dead for all wars, the flesh for all prisons, the bargain-basement hands for all jobs.

Scroll down for the entire collection of tweets written by Sarah Palin about ethics complaints filed against her. They get more frequent and more incomprehensible as time goes on. Are we witnessing a descent into madness? Or the valid protests of the biggest political victim in the history of western civilization? You decide.

Hey everybody, let's play Scandal Pool!

I was getting bored since it had been a couple weeks since a Repub had a public meltdown, so began planning this...
Then we get the Paul Stanley thing, and a spam dump destroys my post before anyone notices...
But hey, we're still on.

I'm putting up Amazon gift certificates (or other online retailers or charities, if they offer e-certificates) to whatever TPM readers can correctly guess the next political figure caught in scandal. Up to $60 in prizes!
Erica & sweetmolly, please try again and I am so rooting for either of your scandals to win.

1. Date Pool - $10 to the person who (first) correctly predicts the date something breaks
2. Identity Pool - $10 to the person who correctly identifies the skunk. Must be prominent political or national-biased-media person. "Celebrities" are excluded as they live on scandal.
3. Nature of the Scandal Pool. - $10 to the best guess as to the breaking scandal. "Sex" does not do it, too easy. "Longstanding affair", maybe.
4. Hypocrisy Bonus - $10 to the person who can peg a perp who has publicly denounced the very behavior they're busted for (Unpaid Hetero Adultery Exemption: Must have voted to impeach Clinton, a la Mark Sanford, or otherwise been really obnoxious about it.)
5. X-acta Pool: Hit all four of the above for an additional $10.
6. Felony/Resignation Bonus: Additional $10 if a winner of one of the above is publicly arrested or resigns his/her office (not meaningless positions like internal party committees) within 1 week of scandal breaking. "Somebody gets arrested" isn't going to cut it without a name.

• Judging done solely by me, though consensus of TPM readers can help. 
• Limit one winner per scandal, except:
• Two people can win in different categories. (identity & date for example)
• If the X-Acta Pool (#5) is not hit because of different winners, I will award two $5 "second-place" prizes in the other five categories, whichever pops up first.
• Expiration: Pool expires when
• $60 worth of prizes are won, or
• when a national health care bill with "public option" is signed into law,
• whichever comes first. So get crackin', scandal -prone politicos!

Additional $20 bonus if anyone can prove right-wing "dirty tricks" behind the 7/24 Spam Attack at TPM!

Last one in the pool is a rotten egg!

Not long after I became a cab driver in the city of Madison, Wisconsin, I was involved in a fender-bender accident on the city's north side. The officer who responded to the scene ignored the evidence that the other driver, a man in a suit in a rented Lexus, had struck me while making an illegal turn and allowed the man to leave, while writing me a ticket for failure to yield. The officer, a young man in his late twenties or early thirties, was patronizing, dismissive, and did not acknowledge anything I said except to tell me that he knew better. When my boss arrived at the accident site, I was understandably angry with the cop. I spoke with my boss, heatedly explaining the situation and the officer's attitude and behavior. I did not scream, stomp my feet, wave my arms, or use profane or abusive language. What I did say at the end of my rant at my boss was: "Well, I'm only a woman so what do I know?"

When the officer heard that last remark of mine, he exited his vehicle in a fury, screaming at me to put my hands behind my back. I was stunned and looked at my boss, who was also shocked. A couple of seconds later, my left arm was yanked behind my back and the cop was yelling in my ear like a drill sergeant: "I TOLD YOU TO PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK!" I was informed that I was "borderline disorderly" and that he could arrest me for my behavior, and that he was "sick and tired of people calling him a racist or a sexist".

Whereupon, I was handcuffed, stuffed into the back seat of his police car, and subjected to the sounds of the officer screaming at my boss, who did his best to calm him down. The cop harrangued me for a couple more minutes, wrote the ticket, then allowed me out of the vehicle where he removed the cuffs and told me he was releasing me.

I was a nervous wreck for days afterward. The incident triggered issues from childhood, causing something very much like PTSD. I was jumpy, frightened, and afraid to work. After much counseling from co-workers and friends, I finally filed a complaint with the police department, which was terrifying itself. I was convinced that the police would retaliate against me and my fellow cabbies. The Madison police department had a checkered history of civil rights violations, and although I was a white woman, I was also a poor white woman. There was the belief amongst most cabbies in the city that the MPD hated us and we didn't trust any of them, based on their treatment of us over the years. My treatment was further proof of that.

I contacted a journalist that I knew slightly and told him what had happened to me, asking him if he had ever heard of the MPD doing that to anyone else, and what would likely happen now that I had filed a complaint. This journalist, a fine writer named Bill Lueders, obtained my reluctant permission to research the story in order to write it up for his newspaper, the Isthmus. I was wary about having a story done, and even warier when he insisted on a picture of me to run with it. The story turned out to be a blessing, and I bless Bill Lueders to this day for writing it. (He has a fine book out now called "Cry Rape", a terrific investigative work about a visually impaired woman who was raped and later accused by MPD detectives of lying and filing a false report. It's available on Amazon and it's a great read. It explains the police department here much better than I can.)

The story garnered me more attention than I wanted or expected, but it was generally good attention. Total strangers greeted me on the street and even at Burger King's drive-up window to tell me how proud they were that I took on the Madison Police Department. The week after the story ran, the internal affairs investigation ruled that the officer who handcuffed me had been abusive, had detained me illegally, and had violated my civil rights. He was suspended for 11 days without pay and was ordered into a sensitivity training program before he could return to patrol. It was, I was told, one of the most severe penalties an officer had been stuck with, and I received an apology from the head of Internal Affairs to boot. I had won. I had won thanks to Bill Lueders, an honest female officer who had witnessed the incident (unbeknownst to us all), and thanks to those who had encouraged me to file the report.

Why is this story relevant to the Gates incident? This is why:

There are cops who are incredibly hung up on the power part of their jobs. They are always looking for someone to disrespect them so that they can flex their muscles and put people in their place. There are mentally unstable police officers. There are cops who are bigots and cops who are homophobes and cops who hate women. Does this mean that all police are assholes? No, of course not. It just means that if you are a cop AND an asshole, you're a much more dangerous person than someone who is not carrying a weapon with a license to use it.

Seemingly, I have less reason to want to take the side of the police in the Gates incident, and I don't take their side. I'm not taking Gates' side, either. What I want to say is that there are two sides to every story. I was definitely angry at the officer, but it was awful that the officer felt he had a right to put me in handcuffs and detain me and threaten me with arrest because he didn't like me saying something about being a woman. He had no right to do what he did. I, on the other hand, have a right to say: "I'm only a woman, what do I know?" without fear of being arrested. Professor Gates had a right to feel intimidated by a white man with a gun demanding ID from him while standing in his own home. I had a right to feel intimidated and belittled by this cop, because he was belittling me---and because the MPD has a history of doing that with people who are poor or people of color, or both.

Professor Gates was probably angrier than the situation called for, but Sgt. Crowley---who allegedly has scads of training in racial profiling---should have been cool enough and collected enough to defuse Professor Gates' fears. Instead, it became a pissing contest between two proud and decent men who let their tempers get away from them. What should have been a simple contact has now become a national debate.

I earned my perspective because of what happened to me. I know how bad some police officers are and can be. I know that people who have darker skin than mine are highly sensitive to threats from cops, and they have reason to be highly sensitive. I also know some very decent cops and one of my nephews is a new officer and I know that their jobs are tough and require a lot more of them than is normal for most of us. I find myself in the middle of this national argument, and I think it's imperative that people try to walk a mile in each other's shoes.

What happened to me was nothing compared to some of the horror stories I've read about and heard about regarding people being mistreated by police officers. I'm damned lucky. I'm also a better person for having gone through that event. It made me stronger, and more thoughtful. I hope the country can say the same once this incident finally gets resolved.

Okay folks!  All I got is snippets and a song today.

TPM: In that spirit, take a look at this new Web video from Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), attacking his potential opponent Charlie Melancon, a Blue Dog Democratic Congressman, for raising money in Massachusetts. It's entitled "Liberal LuvFest."

And speaking of love-fests and people doling out cash...David Vitter was identified in 2007 as having slept with prostitutes, and admitted to an unspecified "serious sin."  http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/david-vitter-attacks-someone-else-for-luvfest.php?ref=fpb

While former Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi allegedly carried on an extramarital affair with Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, he recorded details of his exploits in a secret diary, including the dates and locations of his adulterous encounters. Pickering, a Republican, described several assignations he had with Creekmore Byrd inside the C Street House, a Capitol Hill townhouse inhabited by an all-male group of right-wing Republican congressmen belonging to The Fellowship, an evangelical group.

Thanks to heavily politicized local courts and an aggressive damage-control campaign waged by Pickering and his powerful Republican allies, the diary, which contains the answers to these questions, is locked away in a courtroom in Mississippi. And if Pickering has his way, it will stay there indefinitely.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-23/the-secret-gop-sex-diary/?cid=bsa:archive9

Daily Beast: What are you doing for your family's summer vacation? Shirley Phelps-Roper decided to take her two daughters to New York City from Topeka, Kansas. To protest outside Walter Cronkite's funeral yesterday. They even had a fancy sign made up that said "Cronkite in Hell."

"He's in hell right now," eagerly explains 23-year-old Megan, as mourners entered St. Bartholomew's Church across Park Avenue. Her mom told me that Cronkite "had a platform to influence people in the right direction and he failed to do that. He chose to worship the flag and not God." Also, he was a "fag-lover." It says it right there on their press release: "We protest all this holy Cronkite worship. He was no hero to God. On his Cronkite Watch, America was surrendered to the fag-agenda. Ergo, Cronkite is now in Hell. And that's the way it is. God hates Cronkite. "

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-23/family-of-hate/?cid=bsa:mostpopular2

Ohio Republican John Adams has re-introduced a bill that would make it illegal for a woman to get an abortion without the written consent of the biological father:"There needs to be responsibility for actions," Adams said. "As someone who is pro-life, this is also an attempt and a hope to keep the two people who have created that child together, and I suppose if you just go back to the simple beginning, there is merit to chastity, and to young men and women waiting until marriage." Finally, there appears to be nothing in this bill requiring the man to take care of the mother or the child once they've forced her to bear their child.     http://crooksandliars.com/

It ain't necessarily so

It ain't necessarily so

De things dat yo' liable to hear on de Cable

It ain't necessarily so

They aint fair and balanced oh my

They aint tryin to be balanced

Fathead Dobbs fights the truth for ratings and scents

Til he makes us all so incensed

Oh Barack he was not born in Hawaii

Oh Barack was not born in this country

Fathead and sean might have you believe the worse

Contravening a Certificate of Live Birth

Saddam had all those big bad weapons

Iraq was workin on great big nukes

Dickyc says we are all about to die

He'd tell ya all but for national security 

It ain't necessarily so

It ain't necessarily so

Dey tell all you chillun de govment's the villain

But 'taint necessarily so

To get to the high place on C-sTreet

Feign to live clean, don' have no fault

Oh I takes their gospel whenever it's pos'ble

But wid a grain of salt

De earth is only around six thousand years

Evilution the devil's play thing

But MIT might quibble and not ever give in

To no political bible thumpin no nothins

I'm preachin' dis sermon to show

It ain't nessa, ain't nessa

Ain't nessa, ain't nessa

It ain't necessarily so

Dont give me no old time religion
those who preach, those who preach it
They Aint necessarily
Livin it one little bit

Hats off to George & Ira Gershwin

Read the book Michael Savage
doesn't want you to see:

• Savage Lies: The Half-Truths, Distortions and Outright Lies of a Right-wing Blowhard
  

These "birthers" are nuts.

"Birthers" are the folks who claim that Pres. Obama is not a "natural born citizen," as defined in the US Constitution, and therefore is ineligible to be president.

Among the leaders in this "movement" has been Joseph Farah's WorldNetDaily.com. a veritable font of right-wingnut information and goofy ads.

WND also publishes Savage's Web site.

Apparently, Farah is gong to visit Savage on his program this evening to talk about how search engines such as Google and Bing are "scrubbing" WND's stories about the "issue."

In more than 12 years of Internet experience, I have never seen anything like this," said Farah. "As of today, all the major search engines systematically began scrubbing our content. This happened at the very moment this story broke into the mainstream.

Really? That's funny because I just did a search on these terms: "world net daily", Obama, "birth certificate" and got about 68,000 hits Clearly, they weren't all pointing to wnd.com, but many did. And those that did not referenced the articles.

So Farah's claim that he's being censored is about as valid as Savage's claim that he is. Perhaps they both will join forces and create an umbrella "First Amendment Defense Fund" to which they can entice WND readers and Savage listeners to donate.

Wouldn't that be a payday!

Keep the faith..

Charles Gibson of ABC, in televised appearances this week, acknowledged that
media (no, I will not use the term News) coverage is oft decided by what the
public wants to review.  To ascertain this 'fact', he states the media references
the Google search engine.  Thus, the topics with the top google searches are
addressed by the media programs who dare to have the term 'News' in their titles. 

He advises it's a combo dish offering of what the public wants and what the
public needs (as decided by the media demagogues).  But hey, they have twice
yearly specials on current topics such as Iraq and other timely issues!

There is so much wrong with this approach that it would take me hours of rants
and a fistful of a combo of drugs, chased by multiple slugs of booze, to
enable me to address all that's sick and wrong with the majority of our
media 'News' and their coverage of healthcare reform mandates.

And then we have the 'set-up' (gotcha factor) of the media.  Much like the,
'when did you quit beating your spouse' bit.  Everything from, 'How
irresponsible do you think the President was in the manner he addressed
the Gates issue?' to the inane 'What kind of message do you think it
delivers to African American women when the recently appointed
Surgeon General is overweight?'. These were actual headers from national
media programs.

Ah, but I digress......so,

I'll tell you what I'm gonna start googling and researching (Please, join me!)...

How much ad revenue is acquired annually by the media outlets from
drug companies,  healthcare insurance entities and others who rely
on their ill-gotten (pun intended) profits to prosper?  (Interesting
that PBS has published this info repeatedly!)

And is this revenue the basis for how each and every 'News' outlet
'covers' our current healthcare reform processes? Why aren't the applicable
contributions for all the public office holders who are rallying against
a vitally needed public healthcare (reform) program reported loudly and often?

 
Why aren't they being confronted by the ol' microphone in the face with these facts?

Lest we forget, 99% of those who 'decide' what is and isn't to be published
via both print and televised media have above average incomes with health
insurance benefits most of us cannot obtain. Of course, they share this
common self interests with these politicians and are aware they all sup
from the same trough. 

Please, let's join together and start researching factual data on the financial
rewards being delivered to both public office holders and the media outlets by
those who have the most to gain by ensuring healthcare reform is minimal and
without a much needed viable public option.

We can rant and rave - but I believe it would serve all better if we utilized
our time time and energy to 'Follow the Money'and who is deriving the
benefits from opposing and/or negating  public option healthcare .

Exposing all who benefit from these ill gotten gains may help cure what ails us.

And please, publish your findings here and wherever you can.

With the exception of vicarious moral outrage, the California financial crisis not had a real, direct impact on my life. I left the public school system years ago, and don't have any children to enroll. My healthcare is provided through my employer, and I don't need welfare. I'm not much into camping. Other than the lingering pothole problem that turns my morning commute into a slalom competition, I've been fairly insulated from any effects of the ongoing budget problems.

That may be changing. Mayor Villaraigosa just cut the budget of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Two weeks before the unofficial start of Massive Hillside Conflagration Season. He cut it by $39 million. Such a cut won't be helped by Sacramento's new demand that municipalities lend it money.

I live on a hill now. And six days ago my building caught on fire, mysteriously. The LAFD responded quickly, and because of that, damage was limited to a pervasive luau smell that has yet to leave my living room. The wooden roof of my apartment has been drying in the direct sunshine of Silver Lake for seventy years. A delay, like the ones that the Mayor says we'll all have to deal with under the new fire budget, could have meant -

Yeah. So, Antonio, maybe let's cut back on the multi-million dollar funerals for retro pop musicians, and make sure I'm not going to need my own memorial service.

(photo: firefighters on my neighbor's deck, Sunday)

Sweetmolly TPM's Cassandra ?

Sorry if the comparison does not hold up under scrutiny.   I just started rereading Agamemnon last night and it would come to mind; noting both her spam posts and a C street posts regarding the need for a tinfoil hat.   

Anyway, with Jade no longer posting here(?) Sweetmolly has become my favorite of the short ( and need I say it) and sweet.  So please do not, never, throw in the towel; never give up. GET EVEN!

Now, if Sweetmolly is Cassandra, what does that make you and me, the GOP, Josh, our trolls, and the spammer spree?

M. Paul

Will he follow through?

When you are House-training your blue dog, it is important to be firm, consistent, and willing to apply a rolled-up newspaper when necessary. This is why House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman must follow through on his threat to bypass his committee with health care reform legislation if recalcitrant "blue dog" Democrats don't stop playing the politics of delay. As The Hill reports, Waxman said that the seven blue dogs on his committee threaten to join with committee Republicans to "eviscerate" health care reform, and insisted: "I won't allow them to hand over control of our committee to Republicans."

Bad blue dog! Bad, bad blue dog! 

I sincerely hope that Waxman will follow through on his threat to bypass the committee if blue dogs continue stalling on health care reform. If he does not follow through by applying the rolled-up newspaper as threatened, then his blue dogs will not be properly House-trained, and may even think that they are the masters of the House. This simply will not do! If their disobedience continues with such actions as pooping or peeing on the floor of the House, then the rolled-up newspaper should be applied again and followed by rubbing their little noses in it and putting them out in the yard until they learn how to behave themselves. Not to worry, though: once the rolled-up newspaper has been robustly applied a few times, merely showing it to them should be enough to make them obey. Then they can be trained to roll over, to play dead, and to sit up and beg for doggie-treats.

Good blue dog...!

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Mark C. Eades
http://www.mceades.com

12901 Bruce B. Downs Blvd.
MDC58
Tampa, FL 33612-4799

(813) 974-3609
FAX (813) 974-4990

Marvin Ted Williams, M.Ed., M.S.,Ph.D
Assoc. Vice President for Diversity & Equal Opportunity, USF
Assoc. Dean for Diversity Initiatives, USF Health

email: williamst@admin.usf.edu

"Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation."   Eugene Debs

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Doug Short's chart above, comparing three recessions with the Great Depression, has been posted and updated fairly often in various blogs I read.

But these are new to me:

For those who correctly understand that the "real" S&P 500 bear market started in 2000 with the Tech Crash, here is a chart that overlays its performance on the legendary Dow Crash and Great Depression. Both are adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index (CPI). Dividends are excluded.

... this time adjusted using the Alternate CPI maintained by Economist John Williams at his Shadow Government Statistics website. Williams' Alternate CPI preserves the algorithms in place before 1982, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began introducing a series of modifications to their calculation methods. Those modifications have significantly reduced the government's official estimate of inflation, which has a ripple effect throughout the economy. For example, Social Security Cost-of-Living-Adjustments (COLAs) are accordingly reduced -- not a happy outcome for senior citizens.

Last night while standing in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown, David Shuster had Charles Peirce on to discuss Liz Cheney's reluctance to say Obama is a citizen when she was pressed on her thoughts when she appeared on Larry King this week.

It was clear, as Nicolas Graham of the Huffington Post pointed out (see here), that Shuster wanted to turn the segment into a beat-up on Liz Cheney and the Birther movement; however, Peirce, a journalist for a newspaper, quickly changed the discussion to the mainstream media's tendency to give people like Liz Cheney and other conservative pundits the soap to stand on.

Shuster was not having any of it. See here.

Shuster seemingly fails to comprehend that each day media outlets like MSNBC or CNN go about talking about the Birther movement they are giving it validity and inadvertingly allowing it to continue and spread. There is no need to invite Cheney 2.0 or any other wingnut to defend an irrational position, whether it is the Birther movement or "government take over of healthcare" .

And yet for three days now the topic of Obama's birth has been a recurring segment on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

The obsession of the traditional media outlets to cover and dedicate precious time to these kind of stories is just further evidence that these outlets have forgotten their responsibility to provide news, and have instead settled on providing entertainment for a segment of their ideological base.

To a certain extent we are all at fault. I enjoy the occasional ideological beat down of a Republican congressperson on cable television every now and again; however, with healthcare reform about ready to be put back on the shelf for who knows how long, it is not the time to engage in meaningless cable chatter.

Are you trying to tell me something?

And there is evidence that the biases and bigotries we hide from ourselves may be the worst.  For one reason, if they remain hidden to us, we won't work to change them.  For two, we act on them, even while we tell ourselves that we are bias-free, then rationalize our behavior.  For three, it is easy to tell who Klansmen are, and prepare ourselves for discussions about them or with them.  But when we listen to most of the pundits and anchorpersons on the teevee talk about the Gates-Crowley incident, we have to watch and listen very carefully to their framing of the story.  Watching their body language, their vacuous questions to "black guests," their need to find someone right and someone wrong in the affair.  Plus to give that story and the President's remarks 90% of the coverage instead of focusing on his speech on health care.  Post-racial society, anyone?

I watched Chris Matthews talk to Clarence Paige and Michael Eric Dyson, and Tweety's comments had me banging my head against the wall.  There was no earthly way that he could accept what they were saying and internalize it; he wanted to tie the whole mess up in a package with a bow, and solve it right there. (Paige and Dyson were great, by the way.)

I saw an interview with Officer no-way-i'm-gonna apologize Crowley, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, defending the Citadel of his self-righteouness.  I have no idea what Professor Gates believes about himself, but getting disrespected even after he told the cop who and what he was probably irked him purple.  Deeper self-knowledge might be helpful for both, and to all the police Crowley purportedly advised so well in racial sensitivity training. 

Harvard developed a series of bias tests that measure a person's beliefs about their biases and how they actually respond to bias-provoking questions and pictures.  The Implicit Association Test is available online, and you can take the demo tests, or sign up to be more formally part of the project.  Categories include gender, religion, sexual identity, skin tone, race, disability, Arab-Muslim, etc. 

I'm going to take them, and I hope many of you will.  I'm guessing our results will increase the level and self-honesty of discussion we have.  And jeez, louise, do we ever need to develop a larger, more explicit vocabulary about racial issues than "racism" or "racial profiling!"

link:    https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html 

In today's NY Post, PageSix reports that the author of a new Bernie bio, Jerry Oppenheimer, thinks Bernie was doing business with organized crime including the Israeli mob.

LOL - I don't know about the Israeli mob but Bernie is definitely linked to Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister who resigned last year amid corruption charges. Among other things, Olmert was charged with accepting cash from one of Bernie's customers, Morris (Moshe) Talansky. (To be fair, the outcome of the war with Lebanon didn't help Olmert either.)

Talansky, a former rabbi with business interests in an Israeli satellite company, had been the executive director of the American Committee For Shaare Zedek Hospital. The committee which raised money for Shaare Hospital in Jerusalem had several Madoff accounts although it is not clear if the hospital lost money in the scandal. Talansky claimed he lost a million dollars.

The Olmert investigation was opened in January 2007. If the Israeli authorities investigated Talansky's finances, they may very well have looked into Bernie's business.

In July 14, 2008 post on NY Magazine's Intel blog, Steve Fishman wrote that he had read  transcripts of secretly recorded meetings and phone calls in which Talansky participated. In one meeting, Talansky referred to "Bernie" who Talansky said was very unhappy about losing money in a business deal:

"Talansky, who one participant at the meetings described as a "wild man," also introduced a mysterious character named Bernie into discussions. Bernie, he said, had lost a lot of money in the deal. No one ever met Bernie. But Talansky, Bernie's confidant, let the rabbis know that Bernie was not someone to be trifled with. The transcripts make clear that the rabbis were afraid. For good reason: Bernie apparently wanted to kill one of the participants before Christmas."

"Bernie" as in Bernard L. Madoff?

 Bernie had other, less direct, ties to Talansky and Olmert. Leon Flax, a director of Bernie's London company, was a major donor to Shaare Hospital through Shaare Zedek UK. Flax's brother and sister-in-law, also Madoff customers, accompanied Bernie on a 2004 Swiss ski trip along with a dozen other of Bernie's friends and associates.    

An August 2008 BMIS American Express bill provided by the bankruptcy trustee shows Peter Madoff and his wife booking round trip tickets from Italy to Israel in mid-September just as the proverbial shit hit the fan.

Hmm...   

Let's talk about race!  Let's talk about the police state!  Let's talk about a "stupid" comment!  Let's forget the whole press conference about healthcare and suck all the air out of the room to nationalize an incident where a white officer arrested an older black man in his home for making too much noise.  But let's not talk about the failure of the Democratic Party to get it done.  It was there for the taking.  It still is, but it's just not that important, is all.   This SNAFU steals the headlines.

Should we blame the MSM for this illusion, that the Cambridge Confrontation is what this country needs to discuss right now?  Should we stand aghast that our President declared that the police acted stupidly, before he had all the facts?  What we should do is rally for healthcare!  We should make this rally the event of 2009.  It should dwarf the inauguration.  It should remind Obama and our lawmakers that the people expect reform of the healthcare system, and we are seriously angry with their lack of performance.  We need just one slogan at the event, "Git 'er done!"  We need it to be unmistakable that the people are disappointed it was not done and not getting it done the day they return is unacceptable.  {Pssst!  Dems!  Go get the health insurance lobbyists' money and return to vote for single payer.  Last call, this bar is closing!} 

What I took from the press conference was we that had another set-up.  Isn't this the same woman who ended the last one with some race-related comment?  Didn't she raise some concern that world leaders would dismiss Obama because he was black, or some other idiotic rant?  Isn't she the one whose remarks dominated the news after that press conference?  So, when Obama called on her and made his "stupidly" remark, was it a blunder?  Think chess.  Obama had a brain fart?  Really?  Is there any indication this is something that he has a tendency for, these indiscretions?  Come on, we're not talking about the Vice President, we're talking about Barack Hussein Obama!  The most measured speaker this side of Abraham Lincoln. 

There were mixed feelings for me regarding what I believe he just did.  On the one hand, I have some more respect for him.  He took one for the team.  A team that does not deserve him.  The Democratic Party, especially the lawmakers, is still the party of weakness.  What is glaring and irritating is that with 58 democrats and 2 independents, they can't get healthcare reform passed before the next recess.  It's truly a pathetic performance.  The Democrats need to put on their big boy pants and stop their little tantrums  about how the Republicans are not participating.  [They're not even tantrums, really.]  On the other hand, I wish Obama would say just that more emphatically, that the Democrats are not getting it done and the Republicans are not offering any solutions.

When I think of this, however, I realize that neither is a good idea.  If Obama scolds his party, then he reminds the nation of their weakness, which does not bode well for the next election cycle.  If he underscores the GOP obstructionism, then he reveals what a minority can "achieve" if they work together, which the Democrats are not.  Niether proposition favors a good outcome for Obama, so what does he do?  He says something "stupid"?  I don't think so.  I believe this was an intentional distraction to take our eyes off the ball of a healthcare package bogged down in Congress, evidently immovable.  Or maybe, more importantly, the task of achieving reform is beyond the capacity of the Democratic Congressional leadership.  Has Obama gone to war with the lawmakers he has, rather then the lawmakers he wishes he had?  There is going to be a reckoning over the recess.  Time will tell.  IMHO, if they get this figured out during the recess, they should return and slam a program through Congress on Day 1, showing that they are capable of making a plan and carrying it out. 

Some might say that this strategy lacks the GOP input.  No, we have their input.  They have stated overtly they are not going to participate.  They will bring nothing to the development of this reform.  They want it to fail.  How much more clarity is required for the Demcorats to understand and accept this unconscionable decision, to ignore their duties as lawmakers?  Why ARE the Democrats still talking to them?  This is fantastic!  Then the Democrats get to do it right!  They can craft a program that is not burdened with corporate considerations at the expense of an effective delivery of healthcare.  They will not be saying, "What part of this program will direct funds to private interests?"  Or, "Why are we using all the money for the people and none for the investor class?"  Instead, they will be asking, "Is this the best way to provide healthcare services to the American people?"  If the Democrats create and implement a world class healthcare delivery system, they will get ALL the credit.  WHY is this not the opportunity they wanted all along?!?!?

Obama knows this.  It's not some hidden dynamic. It's right out in the open.  So how does he avoid ending his press conference without people saying, "The Democrats are not getting it done.  The Democrats are allowing a minority party, thoroughly renounced at the last election, to hamstring them.  They're not the right people to get the job done."  How does he avoid that?  He says something "stupid". BRILLIANT!!   

Yesterday, Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly pointed out that Paul Ryan had a piece at the American Spectator Web site. In it, Ryan writes:

The American character itself and the principles of free market democracy which protect and preserve it may be lost beyond recovery if Congress chooses the wrong path to health care reform

Ryan's core argument is that even though healthcare falls into the inalienable right category, government shouldn't provide healthcare no more than it should build homes for its citizens.

Before I explain why reading Congressman Ryan's argument makes me very, very angry, I'd like to unpack it just a bit.

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Is it true the FBI has taken on the monitoring of TPM Cafe spammer attack!?!

Several federal laws have been violated according to sources. 

Anyone have current update on this?

So Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak are going to hold a forum at Netroots Nation next month. Greg Sargent had this to say:

Specter's willingness to brave the precincts of Netroots Nation with netroots hero Sestak underscores how seriously Specter takes Specter's underdog challenge. Given that Specter has the backing of the White House and the Democratic establishment, his scheduled appearance is also a sign that even the most established incumbent can no longer risk taking netroots-backed challengers for granted.

I think it also shows that Specter isn't getting the sincere support of the White House. He's getting "support" but he's not having people from the Obama Administration out in rural Pennsylvania talking up the many merits of keeping Arlen Specter in the senate. Well, there aren't many merits so might as well save on air fare.

H/T Unite The Fight …

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