Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Protection from a Cranky President
Alright, i've had a little more time to review this "Military Commissions Act of 2006" that was passed so quietly that "you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars."
I could probably break down each part and the reasons why it's unconstitutional and completely frightening but that would be 35,000 words and nobody would read it. So here is the scariest part:
Section 948a of title 10 of the United States Code, as added by the Act, defines an "unlawful enemy combatant" as:
`(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or
`(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.
The second section is the important one. This basically says that the President or Secretary of State (two of the most mentally unstable dudes in the country) can assign a tribunal to declare anyone an unlawful enemy combatant. On it's face, this seems like an extension of the Patriot Act and a semi-useful tool against terror suspects. Look just a bit under the surface however and this pretty much allows Bush or Rumsfeld to detain, without counsel, anyone they choose.
The writers of the constitution set in that document the idea that they would protect the country's citizens from a cranky leader. That is, the king couldn't just pass rules or put people in jail because he felt like it. That's why the U.S. has things like Habeas Corpus, due process, probable cause, Miranda warnings, the right to a lawyer and speedy trials by a jury of your peers. This new law, passed with minimal fanfare, takes all that away from us. If Bush has a tummy-ache or Rumsfeld goes completely psychotic, that they can appoint a tribunal of their own stooges and put anyone in jail at any time, for any reason and for any length of time, and without declaring them guilty of any specific crime.
Imagine this if you will: It's 2008 and Bush and his buddies decide that too many of the things they set out to accomplish when they were elected in 2000 haven't been accomplished (denying civil rights, killing women and children, ruling the world, lining their pockets with oil money, etc.). So they decide they're just going to stay in office. The people would revolt, right? (Let's hope anyway.) But any revolution or outcry this would cause could be absolutely quashed because the president and the secretary of state have the power to declare any citizen, any revolutionary, any member of any other political party as an enemy combatant and throw them in jail. The army and the police, if they valued their jobs, would have to comply. Overnight this country could become a police state with thousands, if not millions, in jail for made-up crimes, never to see a trial. They'd be political prisoners.
Now that may be an extreme example, and even my radical mind can't imagine this actually happening, but to me it's absolutely petrifying that there is even the slightest possibility. Sure, it could happen even if this law hadn't been passed but now we've basically given the fuckers PERMISSION TO DO IT! It wouldn't be absolutely legal.
What we've done is pass a law that removes the checks and balances on the executive branch. And we've torn down the things that were meant to protect us against a cranky president. If Bush is in a bad mood (he's out of fruit roll-ups, he can't beat a level on Mario Bros., etc.) and ends up reading this blog, i could be meeting some new friends in Guantanamo by Friday and he would be well within his rights to do it. Let's just hope they put me on the top of the naked-guy torture pyramid...
Good luck to us all.
I could probably break down each part and the reasons why it's unconstitutional and completely frightening but that would be 35,000 words and nobody would read it. So here is the scariest part:
Section 948a of title 10 of the United States Code, as added by the Act, defines an "unlawful enemy combatant" as:
`(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or
`(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.
The second section is the important one. This basically says that the President or Secretary of State (two of the most mentally unstable dudes in the country) can assign a tribunal to declare anyone an unlawful enemy combatant. On it's face, this seems like an extension of the Patriot Act and a semi-useful tool against terror suspects. Look just a bit under the surface however and this pretty much allows Bush or Rumsfeld to detain, without counsel, anyone they choose.
The writers of the constitution set in that document the idea that they would protect the country's citizens from a cranky leader. That is, the king couldn't just pass rules or put people in jail because he felt like it. That's why the U.S. has things like Habeas Corpus, due process, probable cause, Miranda warnings, the right to a lawyer and speedy trials by a jury of your peers. This new law, passed with minimal fanfare, takes all that away from us. If Bush has a tummy-ache or Rumsfeld goes completely psychotic, that they can appoint a tribunal of their own stooges and put anyone in jail at any time, for any reason and for any length of time, and without declaring them guilty of any specific crime.
Imagine this if you will: It's 2008 and Bush and his buddies decide that too many of the things they set out to accomplish when they were elected in 2000 haven't been accomplished (denying civil rights, killing women and children, ruling the world, lining their pockets with oil money, etc.). So they decide they're just going to stay in office. The people would revolt, right? (Let's hope anyway.) But any revolution or outcry this would cause could be absolutely quashed because the president and the secretary of state have the power to declare any citizen, any revolutionary, any member of any other political party as an enemy combatant and throw them in jail. The army and the police, if they valued their jobs, would have to comply. Overnight this country could become a police state with thousands, if not millions, in jail for made-up crimes, never to see a trial. They'd be political prisoners.
Now that may be an extreme example, and even my radical mind can't imagine this actually happening, but to me it's absolutely petrifying that there is even the slightest possibility. Sure, it could happen even if this law hadn't been passed but now we've basically given the fuckers PERMISSION TO DO IT! It wouldn't be absolutely legal.
What we've done is pass a law that removes the checks and balances on the executive branch. And we've torn down the things that were meant to protect us against a cranky president. If Bush is in a bad mood (he's out of fruit roll-ups, he can't beat a level on Mario Bros., etc.) and ends up reading this blog, i could be meeting some new friends in Guantanamo by Friday and he would be well within his rights to do it. Let's just hope they put me on the top of the naked-guy torture pyramid...
Good luck to us all.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
The Day Habeas Corpus Died
This was sure slipped through quietly. I actually read a variety of news sources during the day and i missed this completely.
I'll post a more detailed position on this when i've had a chance to digest it a bit.
I'll post a more detailed position on this when i've had a chance to digest it a bit.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Some Truly Horrifying Shit
I’m on my way home from Pinedale, Wyoming, where my family has had a cabin for 10 years now. It used to be an awesome escape to a little town of 1,200 that just built their first movie theater less than 5 years ago. But recently a huge natural gas deposit was found near our house and over the next 10 years, they will drill more than 10,000 wells and completely ruin my neighborhood, the hunting, fishing and quaint little small town feeling. Actually, the small town feeling is already ruined. See, when they do these things, they do environmental impact studies and they tell everyone that despite the ugliness of the wells, it’s really not going to hurt the land that much, the animals will be fine, etc. But they don’t talk about the impact on people. When you build that many wells, you need a ton of manpower and equipment. And when you bring hundreds of men into a town without hundreds of single women, you’re absolutely asking for trouble. Crime is up, violent crime is up. You don’t recognize people in town. It’s downright scary going to what used to be friendly, neighborhood cowboy bars. May my town rest in peace.
But this wasn’t meant to be an indictment of the murder of small-town America, although we could certainly talk for day about that.
What struck me as interesting during my visit were all of the Halliburton vehicles driving around town. I guess what really caught me by surprise was my underestimation of the size of that company. They have vehicles and equipment being blown up in Iraq daily, they have contractors and employees being kidnapped, killed, beheaded and ambushed all the time and yet, on the other side of the world in Wyoming, it’s just business as usual.
And I’m trying to duplicate this conversation that I had with my dad about it. And I can understand that it’s just so hard to wrap your brain around after all that you’re taught in schools and you hear in the mainstream media and you try so hard to believe in the ideals of this country that this stuff couldn’t be true. But if you look at the facts on some of this stuff, it’s just shocking and overwhelming and completely frightening. It’s the feeling that no matter what we do, no matter how we vote or how we live, that we’re just completely outnumbered and basically, fucked. It’s a tough thing to realize that you really can’t do anything about it. It’s a horrible thing for me to say, but I honestly believe that what’s going on in this world is too big for us to stop. It’s out of our hands. Thanks for playing, please come again. The status quo is too entrenched, the wheels are already in motion.
The oil companies posted record breaking profits last year in the 10’s of billions of dollars. Exxon made $28 billion in profits alone. That’s not just revenue…that’s money they made above and beyond the massive expenses of that company. During that entire time, Americans were caught at the pumps complaining about gas prices. Now I’m a fan of the laws of economics, so I’m not saying that Exxon shouldn’t have priced competitively and made as much money as humanly possible, because that’s the idea behind business. You make as much as you can. But, what I am saying, is that when you look at those numbers, and you look at the people who stand to benefit from those numbers, it’s not a big surprise why we’re fighting where we are fighting and why we are willing to put up with death and destruction and human rights travesties and all the other byproducts of this war. Because the war is still profitable.
How many trucks does $28 billion in profits replace? How many pieces of equipment? How many lobbyists? How many government officials? How many soldiers and officers can be promised high-ranking security jobs? How many terrorist attacks can you afford? (And that includes 9-11, because it cost a few thousand lives, 4 planes and a few really nice pieces of real estate. Add that up and it was a fucking drop in the proverbial $28 billion dollar bucket. I hate to minimize that event in those terms, but that’s what they’re doing, so for the sake of this argument, I must as well.)
And most importantly, how many deaths does $28 billion in profits get you? And it may make you sick to the very core of your stomach to think of death in terms of cost, but that’s how those companies and this government is looking at it. It’s just the cost of doing business for them. It’s the reality of the situation that people are going to die. The companies (and we’ll go ahead and lump the government under the “company” umbrella from now on, because they are one.) will pay the families, express their pseudo-condolences, pretend on their faces that they’re actually upset and that something needs to be done, but in their minds, in their board rooms, in their corner offices, there is a chart, a cost-benefit analyses, a return-on-investment breakdown that puts a price on those lives and determines just how many they can lose before the profit dries up. And I don’t know if most of us even want to fathom that number. It’s high. If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.
When I had this conversation and swished these things around in my brain for a while, the statement was made, “I have to believe that if there was a better way. If there was a renewable energy source, if there was a way to quench this thirst, a way to market new energies that would be cheaper, easier to use, better for our environment and would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make us safer that we would do it.” And I can’t blame that person for making that statement. Because that thought is based in the ideals and the values that we’re all brought up with. We’ve read them in our textbooks, been told them by our parents, politicians and priests. We’ve bought into them, and none of us are at fault for wanting to believe that the people in power really are doing the best they possibly can to move America forward. But they’re not. Because there is no money in it.
And it’s too hard and scary and dangerous anyway to even think about doing it differently. There is very little doubt in my mind that the brilliant minds in this country have thought up and attempted to develop at least 50 different ways -- if not more -- to completely relieve our dependence on oil and I feel strongly that the oil companies, the power companies, the powers in this country didn’t hesitate a bit to buy that idea and bury it. Why wouldn’t they? The money is in the status quo. Always has been. For these companies, there is no benefit in them finding a new way to do it. You find me a company who has changed and adapted and grown into new technologies and new ways to do things; better, cleaner, healthier ways to do things and has stayed relevant over the last 50 years. It hasn’t happened. Sure, there have been plenty of companies in business that long, but they’re all still using the core ideas and philosophies of their original business. When someone finds something new and better, they don’t bring it up in an old company. They start (or buy) a new one. Google, Microsoft, Saturn, Gateway. All had a new idea, and did it themselves (and even now those companies are getting old and slow and they’re the ones buying the new ideas ie youtube). Research and development of new ideas takes forever, costs a lot and there’s no guarantee of any money in it. That’s a basic business tenet. So tell me what incentive Exxon, Shell, BP or Halliburton has to do it any different? None.
It’s absolutely easier and safer for them to maintain the status quo. Do you think the government is going to make them? They own the government, democrats and republicans alike. They own this war. They’re bloody fingerprints are all over it.
The only reason America is in Iraq is to maintain that status quo. Those companies and this government -- that they own and influence -- is only in that country because there is a monetary interest in being there. Their return on investment will be so massive when Iraq settles down. And if it costs billions of dollars in equipment and thousands of lives, fine. I guarantee you it’ll be worth it financially to them. Would they like it to be all settled now? Sure, but I’d like my Microsoft stock to go through the roof right now. Will it? No, but I’m in for the long haul because it’s worth it. The only difference between them and me is the scale of it.
And if you think for a second that what I’ve said about ROI being the only reason we’re there, answer me this. Why don’t we have a standing army of 100,000+ in Darfur? How about in Somalia? Ghana? The Ivory Coast? The Congo? Russia? Why aren’t we there? The same things that happened in Iraq are happening in those places. Actually most of those places are definitively worse. (The people of Iraq were probably in less danger of dying horrifically before we got there to be honest. But that’s another blog, for another time.) But the bottom line is that we’re not in those other places because there’s not enough money to be made there. In the business world, they would say that those places carry a negative cost-benefit analysis.
What I’ve said is not hard to understand, it’s not radical and it’s not all that revolutionary. It’s basic business. It’s free trade. It’s the basis for all that we accept. And that’s the truly scary part.
But this wasn’t meant to be an indictment of the murder of small-town America, although we could certainly talk for day about that.
What struck me as interesting during my visit were all of the Halliburton vehicles driving around town. I guess what really caught me by surprise was my underestimation of the size of that company. They have vehicles and equipment being blown up in Iraq daily, they have contractors and employees being kidnapped, killed, beheaded and ambushed all the time and yet, on the other side of the world in Wyoming, it’s just business as usual.
And I’m trying to duplicate this conversation that I had with my dad about it. And I can understand that it’s just so hard to wrap your brain around after all that you’re taught in schools and you hear in the mainstream media and you try so hard to believe in the ideals of this country that this stuff couldn’t be true. But if you look at the facts on some of this stuff, it’s just shocking and overwhelming and completely frightening. It’s the feeling that no matter what we do, no matter how we vote or how we live, that we’re just completely outnumbered and basically, fucked. It’s a tough thing to realize that you really can’t do anything about it. It’s a horrible thing for me to say, but I honestly believe that what’s going on in this world is too big for us to stop. It’s out of our hands. Thanks for playing, please come again. The status quo is too entrenched, the wheels are already in motion.
The oil companies posted record breaking profits last year in the 10’s of billions of dollars. Exxon made $28 billion in profits alone. That’s not just revenue…that’s money they made above and beyond the massive expenses of that company. During that entire time, Americans were caught at the pumps complaining about gas prices. Now I’m a fan of the laws of economics, so I’m not saying that Exxon shouldn’t have priced competitively and made as much money as humanly possible, because that’s the idea behind business. You make as much as you can. But, what I am saying, is that when you look at those numbers, and you look at the people who stand to benefit from those numbers, it’s not a big surprise why we’re fighting where we are fighting and why we are willing to put up with death and destruction and human rights travesties and all the other byproducts of this war. Because the war is still profitable.
How many trucks does $28 billion in profits replace? How many pieces of equipment? How many lobbyists? How many government officials? How many soldiers and officers can be promised high-ranking security jobs? How many terrorist attacks can you afford? (And that includes 9-11, because it cost a few thousand lives, 4 planes and a few really nice pieces of real estate. Add that up and it was a fucking drop in the proverbial $28 billion dollar bucket. I hate to minimize that event in those terms, but that’s what they’re doing, so for the sake of this argument, I must as well.)
And most importantly, how many deaths does $28 billion in profits get you? And it may make you sick to the very core of your stomach to think of death in terms of cost, but that’s how those companies and this government is looking at it. It’s just the cost of doing business for them. It’s the reality of the situation that people are going to die. The companies (and we’ll go ahead and lump the government under the “company” umbrella from now on, because they are one.) will pay the families, express their pseudo-condolences, pretend on their faces that they’re actually upset and that something needs to be done, but in their minds, in their board rooms, in their corner offices, there is a chart, a cost-benefit analyses, a return-on-investment breakdown that puts a price on those lives and determines just how many they can lose before the profit dries up. And I don’t know if most of us even want to fathom that number. It’s high. If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.
When I had this conversation and swished these things around in my brain for a while, the statement was made, “I have to believe that if there was a better way. If there was a renewable energy source, if there was a way to quench this thirst, a way to market new energies that would be cheaper, easier to use, better for our environment and would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make us safer that we would do it.” And I can’t blame that person for making that statement. Because that thought is based in the ideals and the values that we’re all brought up with. We’ve read them in our textbooks, been told them by our parents, politicians and priests. We’ve bought into them, and none of us are at fault for wanting to believe that the people in power really are doing the best they possibly can to move America forward. But they’re not. Because there is no money in it.
And it’s too hard and scary and dangerous anyway to even think about doing it differently. There is very little doubt in my mind that the brilliant minds in this country have thought up and attempted to develop at least 50 different ways -- if not more -- to completely relieve our dependence on oil and I feel strongly that the oil companies, the power companies, the powers in this country didn’t hesitate a bit to buy that idea and bury it. Why wouldn’t they? The money is in the status quo. Always has been. For these companies, there is no benefit in them finding a new way to do it. You find me a company who has changed and adapted and grown into new technologies and new ways to do things; better, cleaner, healthier ways to do things and has stayed relevant over the last 50 years. It hasn’t happened. Sure, there have been plenty of companies in business that long, but they’re all still using the core ideas and philosophies of their original business. When someone finds something new and better, they don’t bring it up in an old company. They start (or buy) a new one. Google, Microsoft, Saturn, Gateway. All had a new idea, and did it themselves (and even now those companies are getting old and slow and they’re the ones buying the new ideas ie youtube). Research and development of new ideas takes forever, costs a lot and there’s no guarantee of any money in it. That’s a basic business tenet. So tell me what incentive Exxon, Shell, BP or Halliburton has to do it any different? None.
It’s absolutely easier and safer for them to maintain the status quo. Do you think the government is going to make them? They own the government, democrats and republicans alike. They own this war. They’re bloody fingerprints are all over it.
The only reason America is in Iraq is to maintain that status quo. Those companies and this government -- that they own and influence -- is only in that country because there is a monetary interest in being there. Their return on investment will be so massive when Iraq settles down. And if it costs billions of dollars in equipment and thousands of lives, fine. I guarantee you it’ll be worth it financially to them. Would they like it to be all settled now? Sure, but I’d like my Microsoft stock to go through the roof right now. Will it? No, but I’m in for the long haul because it’s worth it. The only difference between them and me is the scale of it.
And if you think for a second that what I’ve said about ROI being the only reason we’re there, answer me this. Why don’t we have a standing army of 100,000+ in Darfur? How about in Somalia? Ghana? The Ivory Coast? The Congo? Russia? Why aren’t we there? The same things that happened in Iraq are happening in those places. Actually most of those places are definitively worse. (The people of Iraq were probably in less danger of dying horrifically before we got there to be honest. But that’s another blog, for another time.) But the bottom line is that we’re not in those other places because there’s not enough money to be made there. In the business world, they would say that those places carry a negative cost-benefit analysis.
What I’ve said is not hard to understand, it’s not radical and it’s not all that revolutionary. It’s basic business. It’s free trade. It’s the basis for all that we accept. And that’s the truly scary part.
Monday, October 02, 2006
The NL West
Ok, i know this post is only going to matter to a few people, but they are some pretty important people. Baseball is important. Maybe not to you, but to some people it absolutely matters. And if you're not one of those people, you're going to have to learn to understand someday.
The most unreasonable thing happened today in sports since Peyton Manning became the star of at least 9 commercials in a row (the one with that fake mustache being the most pathetic of them all. Seriously, is he so desperate to look human that he's begging us to like him during every single commercial break?) Two teams from the painfully mediocre NL West made the playoffs. The Padres were in 3rd place most of the year, then the Dodgers lost 11 straight right after the all-star break, then fought into first place by winning 18 of 19 and then capped off that run but losing like 9 in a row after that.
For a while the top 4 teams (out of 5) in the division were seperated by only 1.5 games...which was really amazing if only for its sadness.
For those of you who don't know, the NL (national league) is made up of 3 divisions (East, West and Central) and the west was without a doubt, the worst of the three. And yet somehow, they have contributed 2 teams into the playoffs.... It's absolutely wacky.
The AL East has the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Orioles. Now the Orioles have blown since before the Palmeiro/Sosa steroid debacle of '05 BUT the rest of their division has still been made up of pretty amazing ball clubs on paper. Meanwhile, the NL West has been completely horrible for a good while, rarely fielding a team with a few wins over .500, but the AL East has been great, with ball clubs with winning records and relatively amazing players. So they get only 1 team in the playoffs this year, but the NL West gets 2??? It's like Jerry Colangelo (former owner of Dbacks), Jerry McMorris (maybe still Owner of the Rockies) and Bud Selig made some kind of blood pact that actually came true.
I'm going to go watch Field of Dreams and Rocky 2 and actually believe that those stories came true, because they would be as likely as the NL West fielding not one, but 2 playoff teams.
And that will conclude my first and only baseball post of this year, unless some amazing World Series ensues, like the NL West opponent beating the Yankees in the World Series with a bloop single against Mariano Rivera on the last out of the 7th game of the World Series, 3 weeks after a terrorist attack kills at least (but not more than) 5,000 people in NYC and only if Jay Bell scores the winning run. (God bless Luis Gonzales)
God bless the D-backs. May they R.I.P.
The most unreasonable thing happened today in sports since Peyton Manning became the star of at least 9 commercials in a row (the one with that fake mustache being the most pathetic of them all. Seriously, is he so desperate to look human that he's begging us to like him during every single commercial break?) Two teams from the painfully mediocre NL West made the playoffs. The Padres were in 3rd place most of the year, then the Dodgers lost 11 straight right after the all-star break, then fought into first place by winning 18 of 19 and then capped off that run but losing like 9 in a row after that.
For a while the top 4 teams (out of 5) in the division were seperated by only 1.5 games...which was really amazing if only for its sadness.
For those of you who don't know, the NL (national league) is made up of 3 divisions (East, West and Central) and the west was without a doubt, the worst of the three. And yet somehow, they have contributed 2 teams into the playoffs.... It's absolutely wacky.
The AL East has the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Orioles. Now the Orioles have blown since before the Palmeiro/Sosa steroid debacle of '05 BUT the rest of their division has still been made up of pretty amazing ball clubs on paper. Meanwhile, the NL West has been completely horrible for a good while, rarely fielding a team with a few wins over .500, but the AL East has been great, with ball clubs with winning records and relatively amazing players. So they get only 1 team in the playoffs this year, but the NL West gets 2??? It's like Jerry Colangelo (former owner of Dbacks), Jerry McMorris (maybe still Owner of the Rockies) and Bud Selig made some kind of blood pact that actually came true.
I'm going to go watch Field of Dreams and Rocky 2 and actually believe that those stories came true, because they would be as likely as the NL West fielding not one, but 2 playoff teams.
And that will conclude my first and only baseball post of this year, unless some amazing World Series ensues, like the NL West opponent beating the Yankees in the World Series with a bloop single against Mariano Rivera on the last out of the 7th game of the World Series, 3 weeks after a terrorist attack kills at least (but not more than) 5,000 people in NYC and only if Jay Bell scores the winning run. (God bless Luis Gonzales)
God bless the D-backs. May they R.I.P.
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