churn

I just have a moment to comment on the current state of psychological dissonance in the political sphere.

There is a great deal to say about the current set of democratic holdouts for which nothing the party candidate can do or say will be enough. If I have to read "But how do you know that Obama will be better than McCain" one more fucking time I will crawl through the godsdammed interweb and strangle the shit out of the moron on the other end. It is ok to be disappointed or to have reservations about some candidate other than the one you wanted, but get a grip folks.

On the other side of the divide we have a republican VP candidate who is willing to say:

"what is it exactly that the VP does every day"

Crap. One step away from POTUS. This honestly has to be a show, but this is taking the Forrest Gump thing a little too far. I had this foolish notion that our nation has had it's fill of short bus politics. Guess I call it Moronathon for a reason.

As a proponent of full disclosure, this is a sentence fragment yet the lack of context does not change the intended meaning. See HERE for a link to the complete conversation.

This is going to be a race to the bottom between the racism on the right (and left...), and sexism on the left. On the off chance that the Democratic side fails in it's built in sexism - and trust me that it will not - there will be a constant stream of Ratfucking going on to make sure that that meme gets propagated effectively.

I am hoping that there will be a little more time to vent my spleen (yum!), errr, share my informed opinion, but that is difficult to say. We are just a little busy around here.

Like PAB says: "I ate some fuzz!"

Live Not By Lies

When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: ``I am violence. Run away, make way for me--I will crush you.'' But violence quickly grows old. And it has lost confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally--since violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies--all loyalty lies in that.

Excerpt from Live Not By Lies, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
RIP

Please take a moment and go read the whole thing. It sits on one side of a balance. With it sit the quaint notion of Rule of Law and all that it represents.

On the other side we have one of the more despicable judicial proceedings of our time. The first military commission trial goes to jury today and it is a sad cynical affair. It has been called Potemkin in nature, but I wonder if such a term could truly encompass the layering of lies, double speak and grotesque posturing that makes up this event.

From the LA Times we have:

The war crimes case against Salim Ahmed Hamdan today goes to a jury of his enemies, hand-selected by the Pentagon official who charged him on behalf of a president who has ordered him imprisoned even if acquitted. ...

Hamdan's defense was encumbered by "protective orders" that prohibited even the mention of the CIA or its handling of Hamdan during a month in late 2001 when the defendant disappeared into "a black hole" in Afghanistan, said the tribunal's deputy defense chief, Michael J. Berrigan. He called the two-week trial an "obscenity." ...

Citing national security concerns, none of the agents nor the reports from CIA interrogations of Hamdan were available to the defense. Four prosecution witnesses testified anonymously, and two Army special forces officers called by the defense were questioned behind closed doors, with no media or independent observers allowed.

What riles me the most is that this is a war crimes tribunal. Think about that in all of it's grotesque irony. The ACLU has a few things to say:

"This trial has been an embarrassment. It's embarrassing that the United States would convene the first tribunal since World War II to prosecute such a lowly and marginal figure, and it's embarrassing that this system has been devised to allow prosecution of the alleged crimes of the detainees while covering up the crimes committed against them," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. ...

"From Hamdan's perspective, this is a Potemkin proceeding," Wizner said, a dry run to provide assurance that no barriers arise to the introduction of coerced evidence or hearsay in future trials. [Emphasis added]

(text and form borrowed heavily from a Cab Drollery posting on this).

We have been so hopelessly dehumanized that for today's modest ration of food we are willing to abandon all our principles, our souls, and all the efforts of our predecessors and all opportunities for our descendants--but just don't disturb our fragile existence. We lack staunchness, pride and enthusiasm. We don't even fear universal nuclear death, and we don't fear a third world war. We have already taken refuge in the crevices. We just fear acts of civil courage.

end

language redux III

One more time (though perhaps not the last) we have another linguistic fuckaduck brought to you by the Current Administration.

A summary of the effects can be found here, but a short quote might be illuminating:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is poised to put in place new barriers to accessing common forms of contraception like birth control pills, emergency contraception and IUDs by labeling them "abortion."

The effect of this is vastly multiplied on people who can not really afford to just pay out of pocket in the event that this passes. The primary focus of this part of the bill would probably be recipients of title X and Medicaid. As described, the changes would also supersede state laws forcing equal access to contraception. New York and California are expressly described as part of "the problem" since they require prescription drug insurance plans to provide coverage for contraceptives. These rules would even interfere with New York State law that ensures survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

The anti-choice movement has always had the elimination of contraception as a significant part of their agenda. These proposed changes are just another step toward these vaulted goals.

The second part of this would be the codification of a persons right to refuse to perform procedures or distribute medication that they disagree with. I personally find this part of it at least as offensive as the first part. In the comments section of the article we find the proverbial:

Read a little more about the proposed bill. It is NOT about banning birth control pills! It is an antidiscrimination bill that would protect the right of healthcare workers who do not want to take part in abortions.

Two quick comments:

1) If you do not like the processing and sale of meat, do not go and work in a meat packing shop. Oh, and then go and say that your belief in the gods damned flying spaghetti monster forbids you to sell hotdogs so the rest of the world needs to deal with it. You got into healthcare or pharmacy or whatever as an adult like person knowing damn well what you would be doing. Transfer to another department.

2) Note here the redefinition of the term 'abortion'. It moves from an actual surgical procedure complete with volatile and politically charged baggage to contraception. Listen to what the ratfucking author of the message says - this bill protects (her) right not to perform or assist in 'abortions' which have been redefined to include contraception (and even the discussion of contraception). So when the only pharmacist in town refuses to sell the pill to you cause baby jebus tells him not to even when he works at a publicly funded hospital, tough luck.

More information can be found here as well regarding additional appalling things about this administration and reproductive rights. I have to go pick fucking LICE out of Mrs. set.elemet's head thereafter she will return the simian favor

A What?!?

I just need to get this off my chest. From the New York Times Opinion page we have a tedious hack job from a so called 'Card-Carrying Civil Libertarian' who says amongst many enlightened things the following pandering nonsense. (This was written some months ago, so the tedious ratfucking political side of it does stand out a bit more than it might have at the time.)

But BBBBBB’s approach to the subject is that of a top-down progressive. BBBB speeches about privacy suggest that BBBB has boundless faith in the power of experts, judges and ultimately herself to strike the correct balance between privacy and security.

Moreover, the core constituency that cares intensely about civil liberties is a distinct minority — some polls estimate it as around 20 percent of the electorate. A polarizing president, who played primarily to the Democratic base and refused to reach out to conservative libertarians, would have no hope of striking a sensible balance between privacy and security.

AAAAAAAA, by contrast, is not a knee-jerk believer in the old-fashioned liberal view that courts should unilaterally impose civil liberties protections on unwilling majorities.

I blocked out the names as much as possible since the content of the discussion is the relevant part.

Hmm. How about "We hold these truths to be self evident" or perhaps the entire framework built into the constitution and related documents which help avoid the tyranny of the majority. So who the fuck cares about these civil liberties being imposed on us by experts and judges besides some deranged minority? Better reach out to the untold masses of conservative libertarians and their sensible balances. Sounds like the usual republican "Father knows best" bullshit.

I really hope that this was just a particularly cynical Modest Proposal.

Either was I really need a drink.

Phone Fun

Another mixed drink here at Moronathon - geolocation and the everlovin need of Congress to act like a sad mix of boot licking toadies. My apologies to any toads out there who may feel slighted by this, perhaps unjust comparison.

Scene I: Enter Department of No Stinking Badges Justice

Agent1: There is this cool new feature where I can track my delinquent, err, godfearing teenager on a web page.
Agent2: Wow. I wonder if we can leverage this to track US citizens without court order or even probable cause?
Agent1: Sounds like a plan!

As per a BetaNews article (as well as slashdot) :

"Court decisions indicate that USAOs claim not to need probable cause to obtain real-time tracking information. News reports further suggest that some field offices are violating a Department of Justice 'internal recomendation' that 'federal procecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas.'"

Think about this for a moment. This is real time information about your location. But don't worry, you really have nothing to lose if you have nothing to hide. Right?

Yes, the EFF/ACLU are suing for information on DOJ practices. Must do that before you can nicely ask them to quit being such assholes.

In a COMPLETELY UNRELATED and otherwise inconsequential bit of information, congress is ignoring US District Chief Judge Vaughn Walkers ruling against the government regarding immunity for telecoms in the NSA wiretapping case. In case you missed it, Walker (hardly a DFH) ruled:

Congress appears clearly to have intended to -- and did -- establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence surveillance activities to be conducted. Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.
(...)
This provision and its legislative history left no doubt that Congress intended to displace entirely the various warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs undertaken by the executive branch and to leave no room for the president to undertake warrantless surveillance in the domestic sphere in the future.

Since this decision is now mute we can thank the DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY for caving in to the pack of craven goofballs running the executive branch. They (the craven goofballs) must have some Really Awful Stuff on the loyal opposition...

None the less, thanks folks for shitting all over the 4th amendment.

So tiny, and yet so Evil...

At last!

Short and sweet personal note. Mrs. set.element is hitting send on her medical school application. Rock on Mrs. set.element!

Mr. set.element.

Heartland Redux

I have a bunch of griping to do, but this was just a little too stupid to pass up.

A 12-YEAR-old American girl and her friends were astounded when a man walked up to their lemonade stand and demanded their takings.

"The guy came up and was, like, 'Give me your money,''' said 12-year-old Dominique Morefield of Terre Haute, Indiana, who was running the lemonade stand with her friends.

"I was shocked. It was just my immediate reaction to chase after him.''

She chased the man, who made off with $US17.50 ($18.50), to a nearby house before calling police, the Associated Press repported.

It took police 45 minutes to persuade Steve Tryon, 18, to come out of the house, where he was arrested and charged with robbery, the AP said.

He is being held in jail on a $US50,000 bond.

"I didn't think anyone would come up to a lemonade stand and steal. That's really low,'' 12-year-old Fred Erstine said.