spotted via justin,

reblogged via bpousman, verbalresistance:

Ron Paul’s “South Was Right” Civil War Speech With Confederate Flag

20.01.2012 - Ron Paul has made no secret the fact that he thought that the South was right in the Civil War. Here he is giving a speech in front of a giant Confederate Flag about why he believes the North was wrong in the Civil War and why the South was right. […]

The country is so crazy divided along the two party lines, because honestly, we’d be much better off being two or three different autonomous countries. I’d love to have a choice to pick either a super liberal country with high taxes, but excellent social programs, or an extremely fiscally conservative country with low-to-zero taxes, and a lack of social safety net.

Instead we are trapped in this never-ending hell in which two groups of people who will never agree, keep meeting somewhere in the middle, or juggling the nation back and forth, and creating an absolute mess. 

I trimmed down this thread - if anyone is interested in reading it in its entirety, as well as the video that was attached, that I couldn’t bring myself to post on my personal blog, then please click here. 

Two quick points that made me laugh / cringe when watching this: 

1) I love that Ron Paul hypes the “pain and suffering” of solders in the Civil War, while kinda’ sort of failing to acknowledge, even briefly, the decades and decades and decades of pain and suffering of slaves. 

2) I also love that of the 11 countries he cites, as having found different ways out of slavery, he cites the buying out of slaves from slave-owners. I assume the country or countries that did this, did so via their Governments… which would be Ron Paul promoting that our Government should have used tax dollars for a large-scale Federal department tasked with the tracking down, paying for, overseeing and follow up in purchasing of the several-million slaves that lived in the United States just before the Civil War. Or maybe he just thinks that would work on a state by state level - I really don’t think he has a clear idea of what he is promoting there… seems to be just rambling, really. 

Moving on. 

And this part is more in response to Justin, who wrote, “I’d love to have a choice to pick either a super liberal country with high taxes, but excellent social programs, or an extremely fiscally conservative country with low-to-zero taxes, and a lack of social safety net.” 

This is what I found to be very, very strange… we *have* had that exact choice.

To be fair, this choice between A and B wasn’t really an option during Justin’s lifetime, or mine for that matter, since we are close in age; but the idea that our country has never existed without social safety nets, safe working conditions, safe drinking water, fair wages, public roads, advanced telephone and power grids, fire and police departments, an educated public… I could go on and on; the idea that if only people had the option of living in this would-be utopia… is stunning. I’m beside myself. 

People that lived long before myself or Justin did indeed have the choice of no social safety *anything* vs social safety something, and they fought hard for the latter, in many cases people died fighting for their Government to better protect the pursuit of happiness in future generations. 

Source: verbalresistance

I’m disillusioned by the people who are disillusioned by Obama, quite honestly, I am. Democrats eat their own. Democrats find singular issues and go, “well, I didn’t get everything I wanted”. I’m a firm believer in sticking by and sticking up for the people whom you’ve elected. If Obama was a Republican running, because Republicans are better at this, they’d be selling him as the guy who stopped 400,000 jobs a month from leaving the country. They’d be selling him as the guy who saved the auto-industry. If they had the beliefs, they’d be selling him as the guy who got rid of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, who got Osama Bin Laden. You could be selling this as a very successful three years.

- George Clooney, spotted via emotional opportunity costs

Look, I love George Clooney, both as a storyteller and as a person who speaks strongly about politics, but I believe he’s dead wrong here.

Just because I cast a vote for someone does not mean I blindly support every action they take, or something even worse, the actions they refuse to take. I’m not mad at Obama because I “didn’t get everything I wanted”.

I’m mad at Obama for stacking his entire administration with the same crooked assholes who took every opportunity to recklessly gamble with home owner’s money; I’m pissed because for 3 years he bought into the Republican debt-driven, contract-your-way-to-growth, idea of austerity; which meant while he eased the hemorrhaging of jobs in this country, he was at the same time gutting out Government jobs; a job is a job for a family, whether they work at the Post Office or Home Depot.

It wasn’t until after OWS that Obama did a 180 and announced a task force with authority to investigate the criminal actions of investment bankers. I’m pissed because he said nothing for weeks during the Wisconsin Union protest.

I’m pissed because he made into Federal Law the exact authoritarian over-reach of power that Bush just simply assumed he already had… when I casted my vote for Obama, I wasn’t giving him permission to kill an American citizen via drone strike or assassination without the slightest hint of oversight.

I’m fucking pissed because Bradley Manning sat naked in solitary confinement for over a year without being so much as charged, and Obama said nothing.

Voting is not an act of conscious - speaking out about things I find morally reprehensible isn’t “eating my own”, it’s exactly how Democrats should be acting if they want to push Obama, or anyone else for that matter, in a direction they can feel good about as human beings.

OWS forced Obama to change his mind on austerity; and we have a long road still to go before we shut down our secret and not-so-secret prisons we have stationed in places like Egypt; we have a long way to go before we stip our Presidents of the right to single-handedly sentence an American to death.

And I want to be clear, my vote in 2012 for Obama will not be an endorsement of these actions, my vote better positions me to effectively pressure my Government to act the way I believe it should act. I have no dissolutions that Newt or any of these others clowns would budge to the left on these issues.

My time is much better spent writing letters to a Democratic President about the legality of water boarding or the importance of a court system that holds fraud liable no matter who carries it out, vs spending my time angry that a republican administration is hyping up godless-baby-killers, ending PBS, or filling Government departments like FEMA with old college roommates. 

I’m not pissed because I didn’t get my way, I’m pissed because I’m doing my job as an informed and involved voter / citizen. 

occupyallstreets:

Local cops use Homeland Security-funded military weapons, including armored cars w/turrets, drones, assault rifles.

North Dakota’s largest city has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there’s not been a single international terrorism prosecution in the last decade.

But that hasn’t stopped authorities in Fargo and its surrounding county from going on an $8 million buying spree to arm police officers with the sort of gear once reserved only for soldiers fighting foreign wars.

Every city squad car is equipped today with a military-style assault rifle, and officers can don Kevlar helmets able to withstand incoming fire from battlefield-grade ammunition. And for that epic confrontation—if it ever occurs—officers can now summon a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. For now, though, the menacing truck is used mostly for training and appearances at the annual city picnic, where it’s been parked near the children’s bounce house. Read More

One of the most important - albiet possibly unintentional - effects of the OWS movement has been the reveal that our police use terrorism-grade weapons against acts of public disobedience. When the evening news starts playing footage of young college students locked in arms on the ground being doused casually with high-end pepper-spray, it becomes harder and harder for a person who doesn’t generally worry about police-brutality to ignore the fact that we have less and less tolerance for Constitutionally protected dissent.

(via anarcho-queer)

House Speaker Boehner orders CSPAN's cameras switched off during contentious House debate

spotted via lee:

Cory Doctorow, boing boing

House Speak­er John Boehn­er’s office ordered CSPAN to switch off its camers dur­ing a fel­low Con­gress­man’s scathing dressing-down over the Speak­er’s refusal to enter­tain fur­ther debate on unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits. The Speak­er asserts…

You know you’re in trouble when you don’t want anyone watching. Side note: Isn’t this our government? Shouldn’t we have the right to watch?

A room full of millionaires slamming the door in our face - and still I hear people express confusion over the Occupy movement. Our democracy at work. 

via cartoon politics:

The internet we use is under serious and imminent threat from the US government and the giant corporations it serves. Protect IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) will impose draconian control and cause lasting damage. Once passed, there will be no going back. 

(via ikenbot)

Source: cartoonpolitics

Yes, I can remember people telling me how much of a grip the US had on the world and I didn’t believe them. I thought it might be good to have an alliance to back up Australia in case of Islamic terrorism or something like that. But I now believe that the US government is one of the number one terrorist organisations in the world. I’ve reached that conclusion through my own research—12-months of intense investigation, reading the WikiLeaks cables, and examining the facts—and it is a non-party political conclusion because I’m not affiliated with any party. The US acts like a rogue state. It preaches democracy and human rights but doesn’t live by it and surreptitiously denies those same rights to all those countries it’s involved in. This doesn’t mean I’ve given up hope on the American people but they have to fight against what’s happening, they have to defend the democratic rights that were laid down by the founding fathers. If they did, they could be a beacon around the world, although I’m not sure though whether big business is going to allow that. I was an ordinary person when I got involved in this campaign but people have to realise that this case is pivotal for democracy in this country, and around the world, because we all share the internet. The technology of the internet has brought free information to the people of the world. We now have a voice—we don’t have to go through the mainstream media—and we can talk to each other across borders, across ages and occupations, and can share information for the benefit of the planet. This is a very important issue, not just for me personally because Julian is my son, but for the future of democracy.
 Mother of Julian Assange, speaks with the WSWS, via wreckandsalvage

(via kateoplis)

Source: wsws.org

Who here has a BlackBerry? Who here uses Gmail? Well you are all screwed!” Assange exclaimed. “The reality is intelligence contractors are selling right to countries around the world mass surveillance systems for all of those products.” The Wikileaks founder went on to say that these international surveillance companies, based mostly in “more technologically sophisticated countries,” often sold their technology to less advanced countries: states that have often been despised by the West for their allegedly authoritarian political regimes.
 Assange, Using iPhone, gmail, Blackberry? You’re screwed!, via WAS

(via wreckandsalvage)

The counterproductive response to 9/11, in which the federal government began providing military equipment and training even to some of the smallest rural departments, has fueled the militarization of police forces. Everyday policing is characterized by a SWAT mentality, every other 911 call a military mission. What emerges is a picture of a vital public-safety institution perpetually at war with its own people.

Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street (via wreckandsalvage)

It’s hard to believe an ex-police chief wrote this, but it’s spot-on:

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.

A must-read. (via spytap)

(via spytap)

Source: thenation.com

Mr. Bloomberg met daily with several deputies and commissioners, and as more business owners complained and editorials lampooned him as gutless, his patience wore thin.

- Police Oust Occupy Wall Street Protesters at Zuccotti Park - NY Times

This meme, of journalists describing elected officials (or, nonsensically, municipalities) as moving to dismantle these protests because their “patience wore thin” is particularly irksome. Because, and any competent editor/reporter should know this, the right to peaceably assemble isn’t subject to the “patience” of an elected official. To describe it this way is to accept that citizens are allowed in any public space only at the sufferance of their government, and at least for now in the U.S., that simply isn’t true. 

(via librarysciences)

Source: The New York Times

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

What a depressing, but amazing, article. (via rickwebb)

(via rickwebb)

via mike hudack:

via James Siminoff: Bye Bye Postman, I will not miss you

via siminoff:

Interesting article in Business week that I saw on Hacker News, The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse.

As part of the US government restructuring they should drop the post office to a private group or shut it down. It is a outdated bloated piece of crap, bleeding billions of dollars a…

No. This isn’t a serious discussion, is it? I go camping for one night in the mountains and I come home to see this article *shakes head* 

Yes, I wonder how long shipping rates will stay relative to what they are now, with cost-of-living, once a not-for-profit, government-run Postal Service no longer exist? “What’s that? You live in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Idaho and have a box of fragile deliverables destined for Beautiful-Country-side, Germany?; well my poor, poor, isolated, friend, let’s see what that will run you…”. 

Not to boil down the entire necessity of the United States Postal Service to simply helping to keep down the cost of shipping things; the real annoying part of Siminoff’s post is that it reads like a typical, “ehh, I don’t really use it that much, so, fuck it” arguments - and those… are the worst. 

(via mikehudack)

Source: siminoff

via hilker:

A local, artisan ice cream maker in Illinois will be forced to shut down unless she uses low quality, processed ingredients (for example, strawberry syrup instead of fresh strawberries) or, among other requirements, buys a $40,000 machine.

via hipster libertarian:

This is wrong, plain and simple. It’s also what government regulations “for our safety” look like in practice.

First of all, this is hardly the center of all that is wrong with regulation, what kind of dumbass makes a statement like this while making it through their entire day presumably without: choking on petroleum-riddled water?, contracting salmonella?, eating a burger with copious amounts of fecal matter?, walking across a pedestrian bridge that didn’t collapse into oncoming traffic?; writing the smug, paper-thin “for our safety” statement, without a hint of irony, on a computer that didn’t blow a fuse in their face thanks to unpredictable fire-inducing spikes in the electrical grid…?

I think I’ve made my point. A broken clock is still right twice a day. And while it’s a fraud what is happening to this woman, using it in an argument to tear down the whole damn regulatory system is… just a sad, thoughtless, fantastical, every person for themselves argument. *shakes head*

Source: hipsterlibertarian

One would have thought the last few years of mine disasters, exploding oil rigs, nuclear meltdowns, malfeasance on Wall Street, wildly-escalating costs of health insurance, rip-roaring CEO pay, and mass layoffs would have offered a singular opportunity to explain why the nation’s collective well-being requires a strong and effective government representing the interests of average people.
Robert Reich, via breaking fangs

via Mark Maynard 

I don’t imagine that much will come of it, but the New York Times has learned that, during the Bush administration, employees of the CIA were instructed to unearth information that might be used to delegitimize the work of U-M professor Juan Cole, a well-regarded critic of the war in Iraq. The following clip comes from the New York Times:

…A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful…

Cole, an Arabic-speaking professor of History, had the following to say today on his site, Informed Comment:

…It seems to me clear that the Bush White House was upset by my blogging of the Iraq War, in which I was using Arabic and other primary sources, and which contradicted the propaganda efforts of the administration attempting to make the enterprise look like a wild shining success.

Carle’s revelations come as a visceral shock. You had thought that with all the shennanigans of the CIA against anti-Vietnam war protesters and then Nixon’s use of the agency against critics like Daniel Ellsberg, that the Company and successive White Houses would have learned that the agency had no business spying on American citizens.

….It seemed likely to some colleagues, according to what they told me, that the Bush administration had in fact succeeded in having me blackballed, since the invitations rather dropped off, and panels of a sort I had earlier participated in were being held without my presence. I do not know if smear tactics were used to produce this result, behind the scenes and within the government. It was all the same to me– I continued to provide what I believe was an important service to the Republic at my blog and I know for a fact that not only intelligence analysts but members of the Bush team continued to read some of what I wrote.

What alarms me most of all in the nakedly illegal deployment of the CIA against an academic for the explicit purpose of destroying his reputation for political purposes is that I know I am a relatively small fish and it seems to me rather likely that I was not the only target of the baleful team at the White House. After the Valerie Plame affair, it seemed clear that there was nothing those people wouldn’t stoop to. You wonder how many critics were effectively “destroyed.” It is sad that a politics of personal destruction was the response by the Bush White House to an attempt of a citizen to reason in public about a matter of great public interest. They have brought great shame upon the traditions of the White House, which go back to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, who had hoped that checks and balances would forestall such abuses of power…

One hopes that Cole is not only successful in his quest for an investigation, but that he’s able to bring suit against the government. I’m not typically one to champion lawsuits, but, in this case, I think it’s probably the only way to ensure that the matter is taken seriously. I’d rather, of course, see a Bush administration official thrown into prison, but I don’t see that happening.

Filed without comment under This is the World We Live In. 

Hedge Fund Gamblers Earn the Same In One Hour As a Middle-Class Household Makes In Over 47 Years

The top 25 hedge fund earners took in $22.07 billion in 2010. Thanks to a generous tax loophole these billionaires will pay a top tax rate of 15 percent instead of 35 percent. Closing that loophole on just those 25 individuals – just 25 guys who wouldn’t miss a penny of it — would raise $4.4 billion, which is enough to rehire 126,000 laid-off teachers.

What’s amazing about our staggering income inequality is that it sparks so little anger among the general population. It’s going to take the kind of sustained protest that we’ve seen in Egypt and Wisconsin to force the Government’s hand - I say Government specifically because this is exactly what Government is intended for, it is a tool for doing together what cannot be accomplished alone, like any tool it can be taken advantage of. 

We are watching the crest of a 35 year long wave begin to break; dropping union numbers, stagnent wages, austerity cuts in education and public programs; a concentration of wealth - and by concentration, I mean a deliberate theft of Government influence, law and resources by the richest one-percent, for the richest one-percent. If there is any silver-lining here, it is that our current environment is unsustainable, something is going to give, hopefully is gives sooner than later. 

Source: alternet.org

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