My usual readers will know already that I have great respect for the artist named Immortal Technique. He has recently been interviewed on the Alex Jones show. Why would he do such a thing you might ask. I would answer that question this way:
Is this not what we need, the left and right are coming together? We must integrate, not separate. United we stand, and divided we fall correct?
The reality is that if we can stop agreeing to disagree: we will often find that always agreed to begin with. Very often when we argue or disagree it is a result of using different words, different definitions for words, being manipulated, and being in pain (which is the primary emotion that leads to the secondary emotion – anger).
Instead I suggest, that when we reach an impasse in conversation, we should stop disagreeing for the moment, give each other space and time, come back when desired and desirable, and then share instead of trying to convince each other of things.
Don’t be intimidated by the length of this video. However long you can listen to it, please do. I assert that you will get out what you put into listening to this. For those of you that know me already I think you will agree and already know what I am saying.
As always, your thoughts and feedback will be appreciated (wanted and needed too).
Could it be true? Is the war on drugs finally coming to an end? We’ve heard similar statements from our Dear Leader while on the campaign trail before his first term. Only time will tell.
This reminds me of when I was painting Jesus fishing up a Darwin fish in Painting 101. Somebody looked at it and said: Jesus wasn’t Mexican. My response was: well he sure as hell wasn’t white!
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is a bill going through the US Congress right now. The goal of CISPA is to allow the US government to more effectively police the internet. Legislators have been trying to get a bill of this nature signed into law for many years, and in fact did try to pass a previous version of this same bill in 2011. It has been reintroduced by Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan’s 8th district. North Korean hackers, Wikileaks, and even the Boston bombing have already been used to justify the reintroduction of this draconian bill.
The problem with this bill is that it would allow the U.S. government to collect personal information about online users from companies without having to issue a warrant. In other words, they don’t need to have any proof or a valid reason to investigate you to get information about your browsing habits, what websites you visit, how often, what you say, and who you interact with. There is even a provision in the bill would allow US companies to require employees to give them the passwords for their social networking accounts (for websites like Facebook) according to the Huffington Post. That is my understanding of the proposed law.
President Obama has vowed to veto the bill unless better privacy rights are not incorporated into the bill. I wonder what President Obama considers acceptable protection of privacy and if his requirements would actually be adequate. This sounds to me like posturing to satisfy his political base. I would wager that if congress makes some largely superficial changes to the bill to make it sound better our dear leader will sign it into law.
In my experience, a good indicator that something is wrong with a bill is that the ACLU opposes it. They have extensive information about the bill. Wired has also written a good article about the issue.
Anonymous has asked the internet community to blackout their websites. Almost 400 websites have joined in their protests; but sadly none of the big movers and shakers like Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, or Facebook have taken part (clearly WordPress.com hasn’t).
15 more of the 166 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have been held since 2002, mostly without any charge due to a lack of any substantive evidence, have joined the hunger strike that has been going on since February of this year. It is not enough that these prisoners’ human rights have been violated by being tortured against the statutes of the Geneva Conventions. It is not enough that the Obama Administration has not managed to close down Guantanamo Bay prison facility, as has been repeatedly promised, and as lefties maintain President Obama has every intention of doing. We now have evidence of new violations of American law.
I dispute the idea that the Obama Administration ever really intended to close down the facility. It was just another empty campaign promise. My assertion is supported by the fact that it is well known that congress does not have the political will to close down the facility. This is further reinforced by the news of bugs found in the rooms where attorneys meet with their clients, emails and data that have been “lost” on government servers, and emails and data that have been removed from private servers, clearly by government hackers. Really, who else has the resources to find out where all these private servers are and has the means and motive to do it? This is all far to convenient to be an accident. Cenk Unger of TYT explains the most recent injustices quite well.
“Prominent Democrats — including the President and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — are openly suggesting that Medicare be means-tested and Social Security payments be reduced by applying a lower adjustment for inflation. This is even before they’ve started budget negotiations with Republicans”
An excerpt from his blog post.
There is another thing Mr Reich is wrong about. WE NEED CLASS WARFARE, and he’s an appeaser because he doesn’t recognize the Democratic Party as the bunch of plutocratic lapdogs they are.
I ran across this clip from “The West Wing” the other day. It really made me think (and convinced me that I have to watch this show). How could it be stated more succinctly? This is what liberals have done for us:
This make me wonder: where are the liberals now? Why aren’t they stopping the constant attacks on our social safety net? Ostensibly they are in the Democratic Party; but the Democratic Party is not the liberal party anymore. There is no party for the liberals. Don’t feed me that bull about the Libertarian Party being the party of liberals either. Most Libertarians would like nothing more than to completely remove the social safety net in lieu of what can only be called social Darwinism. If anything the Libertarian Party is the party of yes small government and austerity (you know what the Republicans claim to be). But I digress, there is no place for liberals in any political party today. There is just a huge ugly mess to clean up after the two ‘parties’ just trashed the house; and there are no parents to come back and scold them for the damage they have done. Well, not unless the American people can start acting like responsible parents instead of spoiled selfish brats.
Why can’t you call the Democratic Party liberal? Often the reason is subtle, like their perceived inability to act. The main problem though is that you can’t call the Democratic Party liberal just simply because it opposes a slightly more conservative party. We need to face the fact that the Democratic and Republican parties have moved steadily to the right for the last twenty to thirty years. Sadly, liberals, by in large, have not noticed that the Democrats no longer represent their interests; instead they represent banks, lawyers, and the corporatocracy, not in word, but in deed.
Let me illustrate how far to the right the Democratic Party has slid by reviewing some of what the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party have done or allowed to be done since President Obama took Office:
Renewed the Patriot Act even though president Obama and many Democrats campaigned against it (Praise to Denis Kucinich for voting against it)
Campaigned for single payer health care and settled for a health care bill authored by the Heritage Foundation (The most conservative think tank in my opinion)
Allowed the executive branch to decree that it has the right to pronounce ‘due process’ via an executive review team – allowing it to kill American citizens without ever having a court date
Reappointed Robert Gates, George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense
Appointed Timothy Geithner, a central banker, as the Secretary of Treasury (nothing like an industry regulating itself)
Attempted to appoint John Brennan as the Director of the CIA twice despite being supportive of torture and being an architect of the drone program (this deserves its own article)
Maintained and expanded the ruthless free trade paradigm that decimates the developing world and American industrial workers (Colombia and Panama)
Allowed new offshore oil drilling permits at an accelerated pace mere months after the most costly oil spill in American history in the Gulf of Mexico – without imposing any useful new regulations
Offered to cut Social Security and Medicare to avoid the “fiscal cliff” (These programs do not affect our country’s debt – they are self-sustaining and easily made solvent long term)
Pardoned the companies that committed warrant-less wiretapping under the Bush Administration (OK this was W. Bush era – but U.S Senate Democrats, including Obama, voted for the bill)
Refused to prosecute Bush Administration officials that justified, allowed, and committed acts of torture
Continued warrant-less wiretapping by approving the FISA bill while government officials maintain that they cannot even estimate how many American citizens have been snooped on as a result.
I could go on but you get the point.
So who is speaking for the liberals now? With the exception of Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison I honestly have no idea. We lost Denis Kucinich. We lost Barnie Frank. We lost Anthony Weiner . Who else is left (pun intended)?
We could try for a new liberal political party. One problem with this approach is that the Supreme Court has sanctioned the two-party system by allowing laws in various states that make third parties more difficult to form (I will address this in the future). Another problem is splitting the ‘liberal vote’ which could mean a series of Republican wins and majorities for a long time to come.
So I guess it’s up to us guys. We have to protest. We have to push our politicians to represent our interests. We have to make calls and write letters to our congressmen. We have to get the money out of politics (or legalized bribery as I like to call it). We have to push for run-off voting. We have to push for an end to the two-party system. We have to elect officials that will stand up for our rights. If they don’t represent our interests we need to promptly attempt recall elections when possible, or at least vote them out after their term is done. I wish I had better suggestions. I welcome your ideas. Seriously, help.
