Before we get to anything else, it is critical to address the issue of whether the risk of terrorism has anything to do with the highly carcinogenic XRay scanners in airports. (Washington Post 1/10/10)

Since the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff has given dozens of media interviews touting the need for the federal government to buy more full-body scanners for airports.

What he has made little mention of is that the Chertoff Group, his security consulting agency, includes a client that manufactures the machines. The relationship drew attention after Chertoff disclosed it on a CNN program Wednesday, in response to a question.

An airport passengers' rights group on Thursday criticized Chertoff, who left office less than a year ago, for using his former government credentials to advocate for a product that benefits his clients.

This proves, not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond a shadow of a doubt that "terror risks" played absolutely no role in the decision to deploy these highly carcinogenic scanners. The decision was based exclusively on blatant political corruption.

Now, let's look at the scanners themselves.

1) They bombard innocent Americans with XRays for ten seconds each time they are used.

2) Anyone who has taken some physics knows for a fact that it is physically impossible to limit exposure of XRays to human skin without the vast majority of the XRays penetrating the body. (The human body is not a highly sophisticated XRay mirror.)

3) The reason why XRays provide such good bone scans is that soft tissue (e.g. skin) doesn't show up at the levels of radiation exposure used for medical XRays.

4) To get the highly detailed scans being shown in the media as output from these carcinogenic scanners, the levels of radiation exposure would have to be orders of magnitude higher than medical XRays.

5) Tens of millions of Americans have been exposed to the highly carcinogenic scans without any kind of informed consent.

I should also point out that the how "opt out" thing is highly deceptive too. Here's how the TSA works the scam.

First, they have an employee randomly harassing everyone in line in a manner that borders on homicidal. This is done to disorient passengers who already are busy trying to comply with all the ridiculous rules that have nothing to do with fighting terrorism and everything to do with trying to scare people needlessly.

Second, they disguise the cancer causing scanners so it isn't obvious what they are. They refuse to have any kind of descriptive signage, much less the warning signs they are morally and ethically required to have for such dangerous machines.

Third, they talk you through the process without telling you that you are being exposed to the XRay scans. By the time you figure out what they are doing to you, it's too late.

So much for "opt out."

Of course, the corporate media are parroting corporate propaganda about the scanners, which amount to resorting to bad science fiction hand waving to claim that the scanners are safe. I'm not stupid enough to believe that bullshit, and you shouldn't believe it either. I have family too far away to reasonably visit by car or train, but one way I can reduce my exposure to these carcinogenic scans is to travel by car or train for vacations. I would like to take pleasure trips to Europe and across the country, but I'm not going to take a needless risk by going through these deadly scanners more than absolutely necessary.

Anybody who doesn't cut back air travel in response to these scanners is just plain stupid.

Anyway, obviously there is no way that I could ever vote for Barack Obama after he did something so incredibly heinous and unforgivable. It will be years before I will know if I got cancer from these incredibly dangerous scanners. However, if I do get cancer, I will devote the remaining time I have left to naming and shaming Barack Obama and all the other people responsible for the scanners that gave me that cancer.

Makes you think.



Heterosexist hate crimes have been incredibly common for decades. The video doesn't mention this, but trans queers are the most targeted among the most targeted.

 

Statistics don't lie, do they? (H/T: The Punk Patriot)

Here's an additional reason why rising life expectancies for some don't validate raising the retirement age. Just because people at higher income levels are living longer doesn't mean that the non-lethal health problems facing the elderly have gotten that much better.

(Explanation here.)

8:00 AM · Breakfast paid for by lobbyists! My Favorite Thing!

9:00 AM · Scapegoating a minority group! My Favorite Thing!

9:30 AM · Kissing Faux News butt! My Favorite Thing!

10:00 AM · Looking for contacts for future lobbying jobs! My Favorite Thing!

10:30 AM · Denying Global Warming! My Favorite Thing!

10:45 AM · Saying outlandish things to chase after big campaign checks! My Favorite Thing!

11:00 AM · Cutting services to the middle class and the poor! My Favorite Thing!

11:30 AM · Cutting taxes for rich donors! My Favorite Thing!

11:45 AM · Paying Sarah Palin to speak for me! My Favorite Thing!

12:00 Noon · Lunch and cigars paid for by lobbyists? My Favorite Thing!

1:00 PM · Defending Big Oil and Big Coal! My Favorite Thing!

1:30 PM · Using a prostitute paid for by lobbyists? My Favorite Thing!

2:00 PM · Faking religious piety! My Favorite Thing!

2:30 PM · Sexually Harassing my staffers! My Favorite Thing!

3:00 PM · Drooling over Christian religious extremists! My Favorite Thing!

3:30 PM · Smoking Cuban cigars? My Favorite Thing!

4:00 PM · Insisting on sanctions against Cuba? My Favorite Thing!

4:30 PM · Calling middle class people elitist! My Favorite Thing!

5:00 PM · Dinner and drinks paid for by lobbyists? My Favorite Thing!

Excerpts From a Middle Class American's Diary

Day 14,724 of my captivity...

 

You may wonder how rightist books get on the bestseller lists, especially since most rightists don't read much. One way that this often happens is that a far right multimillionaire will buy thousands of books to get them on the bestseller lists. Some of the bestseller lists are on to that and ignore the mass single buyer purchases or give those books asterisks in their listings.

Well, another method is becoming common in putting books on bestseller lists: offering them free as incentives for joining an extreme right organization or subscribing to an extremist publication. A while back, I wanted to comment on a right blog, so I had to register for Townhall's bullshit emails. It can get annoying, but it gives a really instructive look on the right's noise machine.

Here's an offer I recently received in my email.

Today, former Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin released her new book America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag. You can now get this exciting new book FREE with a one year subscription to Townhall Magazine. We have a very limited number of Palin's new book so please order quickly.

Click here to get Sarah Palin's New Book FREE

We expect this offer to break records. Sarah Palin's last book was one of the decades' best sellers and in many areas was difficult to find in bookstores due to such a high demand. We have our hands on a limited number of books and we expect our supply to be depleted QUICKLY. You won't find a better offer anywhere else.

This build's up the subscriber base for a far right publication while lifting the Wasilla Grifter's book up the bestseller charts.



Here are some of my ideas for titles of parody books:

America by Hand: Scribblings on Family, Faith, and ...Uh...I Can't Read That

Alaska by Heart: If You Won't Make Me President, We'll Secede

GOP by the Throat: Reflections on Politicians Kissing My Backside

America by Cash or Credit Card: Reflections on My Net Worth

Sigh.

Photos: cornexo

sloomis08

Hat Tip: Anything Adirondack



 

Sound familiar?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

- Ben Franklin

This quote has been misattributed to Einstein and Mark Twain, probably others too. However, the source isn't the really interesting part. It's the social context.

Why do people keep referencing it these days? Well, with high unemployment, massive theft from ordinary Americans and the US Treasury by the banksters, rising bigotry promoted as a tool of social control, two major political parties that are disturbingly similar and disturbingly hostile to the interests of the vast majority of Americans, corporate media that get more monolithic and propagandistic with every passing day, massive environmental disasters, and so much else going terribly wrong, it doesn't take the wit of Franklin to figure it out.

Things aren't working in this country. America is horribly fucked up. The world around us is a mess as well, and "our" government and corporations play a huge role in that. People keep trying to do the familiar things to try to fix the areas of dysfunction, and they just keep getting worse.

Obviously, we need to do somethings differently. But what? Can we mine our nation's activist history, especially from the 1930s and 1960s for strategy and tactics? Is the metaphorical road so qualitatively different that we have to reinvent a new wheel?

 

Most of the political commentary in the corporate media on the Cat Food Commision has come from men, which is typically sexist but extra bizarre because the CFC's assault on Social Security would disproportionately affect women.

To understand what the Cat Food Commission is about, it is first instructive to understand The Shock Doctrine, a concept developed by Naomi Klein, one of the most important thinkers of our time. Excepts from the documentary film, "The Shock Doctrine" broadcasted on Democracy Now in 2007, provide a good summary of what this is all about.

NAOMI KLEIN: Remaking people, shocking them into obedience. This is a story about that powerful idea. In the 1950s, it caught the attention of the CIA. The agency funded a series of experiments. Out of them was produced a secret handbook on how to break down prisoners. The key was using shock to reduce adults to a childlike state.

TEXT: The following narration is excerpted from the CIA’s 1963 and 1983 interrogation manuals.

NARRATION: It’s a fundamental hypothesis of this handbook that these are techniques are, in essence, methods of inducing regression of the personality. There is an interval, which may be extremely brief, of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis. Experienced interrogators recognize this effect when it appears and know that at this moment the source is far more open to suggestion, far likelier to comply, than he was just before he experienced the shock.

NAOMI KLEIN: But these techniques don’t only work on individuals; they can work on whole societies: a collective trauma, a war, a coup, a natural disaster, a terrorist attack puts us all into a state of shock. And in the aftermath, like the prisoner in the interrogation chamber, we, too, become childlike, more inclined to follow leaders who claim to protect us.

One person who understood this phenomenon early on was the famous economist of our era, Milton Friedman. Friedman believed in a radical vision of society in which profit and the market drive every aspect of life, from schools to healthcare, even the army. He called for abolishing all trade protections, deregulating all prices and eviscerating government services.

These ideas have always been tremendously unpopular, and understandably so. They cause waves of unemployment, send prices soaring, and make life more precarious for millions. Unable to advance their agenda democratically, Friedman and his disciples were drawn to the power of shock.

NARRATION: The subject should be rudely awakened and immediately blindfolded and handcuffed. When arrested at this time, most subjects experience intense feelings of shock, insecurity and psychological stress. The idea is to prevent the subject from relaxing and recovering from shock.

NAOMI KLEIN: Friedman understood that just as prisoners are softened up for interrogation by the shock of their capture, massive disasters could serve to soften us up for his radical free-market crusade. He advised politicians that immediately after a crisis, they should push through all the painful policies at once, before people could regain their footing. He called this method "economic shock treatment." I call it "the shock doctrine."

Take a second look at the iconic events of our era, and behind many you will find its logic at work. This is the secret history of the free market. It wasn’t born in freedom and democracy; it was born in shock.

An obvious example of this being applied to the US was what has been done to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a city with increased homelessness and displaced people, perfectly livable public housing was torn down a couple of years after the hurricane as the coup de grace of exploitation of tragedy to turn the city over to wealthy and corporate interests.

Another example of the Shock Doctrine political economy is the Cat Food Commission in the US. In this case, a real Great Recession is being used in concert with phony hysteria about Social Security to try to push for a massive redistribution of income and wealth to the rich from everyone else.

Cindy Sheehan's recent blog posting, Savage Austerity, puts the issue in concrete, human terms. The entire posting is well worth reading, but I'll excerpt the part most directly related to the Cat Food Commission here.

I have been worried about Obama’s Bowles-Simpson “Cat Food Commission” (CFC) on reducing the deficit since it was announced, and it turns out my worries were well founded.

Besides suggesting raising the retirement age to an ungodly 69, savage cuts to Social Security and Medicare are proposed. Who needs Social Security and Medicare? Not the elite, but they are not forgotten in the CFC plan, the CFC also proposes to REDUCE taxes on the top earners from an already too low 35%, to an absolutely obscene 23%! Obama is following the international sport of the ruling class of forcing the least advantaged in society to pay for the crimes and excess of the One-Percent Club—those who sit at the top of the economic food chain controlling at least 50 percent of the nation’s wealth.

One thing we must understand, especially in the U.S, is that Capitalism creates these crises to be able to “capitalize” on them. The bubbles of the past were generated for gross profit on the expansion, and economic vampirism on the contraction. We who are not in the One-Percent Club may feel some temporary prosperity on the expansion, but each contraction squeezes us tighter and tighter.

In the CFC, there are also modest cuts proposed to defense, but, if any do go through, (very doubtful) it will just be a symbolic gesture meant to prove to us that the parasites really are “in it” with us.

In the commentary, Ms. Sheehan also shows that she gets it in terms of something that is taboo to discuss in corporate media: the parasitism of the rich.

Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the host. Well, the Capitalists are definitely a species of creature that benefits at the expense of its host—the workers and our prosperity. The intriguing thing about the parasitic behavior of the One Percent Club, though, is in its very name: One Percent. One percent of the economic parasites in the U.S. are benefiting off of the rest of us.

Here though, it’s almost as if we have invited our parasites to suck the life out of us, and we not only give them our comfy beds, we cook them a delicious breakfast, too, and compose a lovely Thank You note to them to add insult to injury.

Corporate propagandists act like we actually owe the rich for everything, not vice versa. In the upside down world of this propagandistic blather, rich people create jobs rather than the rest of us creating the wealth that the rich exploit. Never mind the fact that the rich in the US are shipping jobs out of the country with ruthless glee.

Why are most male commentators, even outside of the corporate media, afraid to acknowledge this parasitism?

Photos: miketually

D.C.Atty

 

Ratzi's latest power and money grab will have devastating consequences for children. (From Reuters 11/19/10)

The Roman Catholic Church will launch its first ordinariate for disaffected Anglicans in England and Wales in January and take in bishops, priests and laity over the following months, the Church announced on Friday.

Five traditionalist Church of England bishops have applied to join the ordinariate, a Church subdivision retaining some Anglican traditions, and about 30 groups of parishioners are due to cross over, Church leaders told journalists.

Given the rampant child molestation in the Roman Catholic clergy and the general level of corruption and greed in that church, it is highly suspicious that anyone would want to join it at this point. Obviously, some of the preachers who want to sign up want to molest children and are looking for a church that will protect them when they do it. Ratzi's hate church certainly has delivered in terms of protecting child rapists.

These days, no responsible parents anywhere in the world will allow their children to set foot in Ratzi's churches.

Ratzi Photo: eürodäna

 

What Is Transgender Day of Remembrance?
(From the Official Website)

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.

Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgender — that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgender people.

We live in times more sensitive than ever to hatred based violence, especially since the events of September 11th. Yet even now, the deaths of those based on anti-transgender hatred or prejudice are largely ignored. Over the last decade, more than one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or prejudice, regardless of any other factors in their lives. This trend shows no sign of abating.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance serves several purposes. It raises public awareness of hate crimes against transgender people, an action that current media doesn’t perform. Day of Remembrance publicly mourns and honors the lives of our brothers and sisters who might otherwise be forgotten. Through the vigil, we express love and respect for our people in the face of national indifference and hatred. Day of Remembrance reminds non-transgender people that we are their sons, daughters, parents, friends and lovers. Day of Remembrance gives our allies a chance to step forward with us and stand in vigil, memorializing those of us who’ve died by anti-transgender violence.

There are events in numerous countries throughout the world.

For me, this is a time to reflect on the contributions that transgender people have made to all of our lives and the senseless cruelty they experience far too often.

 

Now that President Obama's Cat Food Commission's initial draft of draconian social service cuts has come out, it is getting a lot more attention. The goals of the Cat Food Commission seemed initially to be focused on a jihad against Social Security and Medicare. That crusade is definitely part of the agenda, but the Cat Food Commission has a broader goal.

The Cat Food Commission is a broad based attempt to transfer income and wealth from the elderly, the middle class, and the poor to the rich.

Here are some of the specific recommendations from the Commission's draft report:

From CommonDreams.org 11/10/10 (bolding mine):

• 75% of the solutions in the co-chair mark are spending reductions, 25% are tax increases.

• They want to add co-pays to the Veterans’ Administration and TRICARE, as well as pushing individuals covered by TRICARE into an employer policy. They also want to freeze noncombat military pay for three years. And, they want to end schools for families on military bases, instead reintegrating soldier’s kids into the public school system (because that’s so easy for a military family that moves every other year).

• They would cut the federal workforce by 10%, freeze all salary increases and bonuses for three years, and reduce Congressional and White House budgets by 15%. Surely this is the way to a better and more efficient federal workforce.

• They would eliminate all funding for commercial space flight, as well as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and increase fees at national parks and the Smithsonian museums.

• Increase co-pays in Medicaid and cost sharing in Medicare. In addition, the plan would cap Medicaid/Medicare growth, so that the government would have to either increase premiums and co-pays or raise the Medicare eligibility age if the cost grows above the baseline.

• Massively overhaul the tax code. They have a couple different options on this. In the first, there would only be three brackets: at 8%, 14% and 23% for the top bracket. All tax expenditures – $1.1 trillion, including the Earned Income Tax Credit and the child tax credit, would be eliminated. The corporate tax rate would go down from 35% to 26% as well. Option 2 borrows from the Wyden-Gregg tax reform, establishing rates at 15%, 25% and 35%, increasing the standard deduction, capping the mortgage interest deduction (and eliminating it for second homes), limiting the charitable deduction, eliminating other tax expenditures, and capping the employer deduction for health care. Corporate rates would also go down, with loopholes removed.

• They would increase the gas tax by 15 cents a gallon beginning in 2013, to pay for transportation projects.

• They would pay for the “doctor’s fix” by cutting other reimbursements to hospitals and drug companies, as well as through tort reform (yeah, that’ll do it). They would also speed up a lot of the cost controls in the health care law. They also ask, if health care costs are still rising after the implementation of the exchanges, for Congress to consider a variety of options, including this:

Add a robust public option and/or all-payer system in the exchange

• Reduce farm subsidies by $3 billion per year.

• On Social Security, gradually increase the retirement age to 69 by 2075. They would also institute progressive price indexing to cut scheduled benefits for middle and high-income earners. They would index cost of living increases to inflation and not wages. They would also increase the payroll tax to capture 90% of wages, rather than the current 86%. Social Security savings would stay inside the program to keep it solvent, not be used for deficit reduction.

I've read from multiple sources that they also want to eliminate the home mortgage deduction for all homes.

Here are some things that are not included in the agenda of this alleged "deficit commission."

- Cutting off all funding to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

- Closing the majority of military bases abroad.

- Getting rid of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

- Getting rid of the Clinton and Reagan tax cuts for the rich.

- Raising corporate taxes.

- Instituting luxury taxes.

- Instituting an SUV tax.

- Repealing all corporate controlled trade agreements and withdrawing from the World Trade Organization, making it possible for our government to expand revenue from tariffs, traditionally one of its major funding sources.

- Initiating a tax on all short term stock, bond, mutual fund, commodities, hedge fund, derivative, and other transactions involving financial instruments. (Call it the Bubble Prevention Tax.)

- Cut back on wasteful and unconstitutional homeland security spending

- An end to covert operations in Iran

- End of all aid to Israel

- End of aid and support for the fascist dictatorship in Colombia

- Legalization of Marijuana

- Sentencing crack like other cocaine

- Legalizing other victimless crimes such as gambling and prostitution.

- Taxing capital gains (other than primary home sales) like income actually earned by working

A "deficit commission" that proposes cutting taxes for the rich and corporations is not a deficit commission. Many have pointed out that wealthy and corporate interests are turning the same Shock Doctrine tactics that were used on non Western countries onto Europe and North America. We need to do more to fight back.

Photo: Sunfox