— from Truthout

"It ain't getting any smarter out there, people."
— Frank Zappa

Reality is a funny thing these days, because it's pretty much bent. A guy named Nathan Poe, after a number of singular interactions on the website Christianforums.com, came up with an adage that has come to be known as Poe's Law: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing."

To wit: it has become pretty much impossible to distinguish between actual craziness and parodies of craziness, because the craziness has gotten so crazy that literally everything is on the it-could-be-real table.

The Michael Dunn trial has all but proven that it's legal in red "Stand Your Ground, Shoot First" states for a white man to kill a black man simply because he's afraid of black people.

And just a few months ago, the Supreme Court said that there's no longer any significant racial discrimination or animosity in America in its ruling on the Voting Rights Act.

So, with that in mind, let's take a look at how things really are in America today when it comes to racial equality.

In response to the Jordan Davis case and the Trayvon Martin case, the folks over at ColorOfChange.org have launched a new campaign titled "Black Lives Matter."

Say you’re philosophically opposed to food stamps. Let’s say you feel better about yourself by calling those who’ve hit hard times freeloading parasites. Suppose the very idea someone somewhere may be cheating the system is enough for you to support snatching all subsidized sandwiches out of the hands of your fellow Americans. Imagine that right in the middle of the Great Recession you think feeding the hungry is actually hurting the poor and discouraging them from working. Let’s pretend—hypothetically—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the government programs you’d most like to see cut or dissolved altogether. Let’s suppose you’re the kind of person who’s disgusted by the whole thing. “Get a job!” you mutter at the TV when the food stamp issue is broadcast into your home.

Then you should be for raising the minimum wage!

— from Moyers & Company

On Wednesday, Bloomberg’s Renee Dudley reported that Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, is “looking at supporting an increase in the federal minimum wage, breaking with business and industry groups that oppose such a measure.” (That same day, Gap Inc., made a surprise announcement that it’s raising the minimum wage it pays its employees to $10 per hour by 2015.)

Wal-Mart is weighing the impact of additional payroll costs against possibly attracting more consumer dollars at its stores, David Tovar, a company spokesman, said today in a telephone interview. Increasing the minimum wage means that some of the 140 million people who shop at the chain weekly would “now have additional income,” Tovar said.

A new kind of world meeting has just ended (2-13-14) in Nayarit, Mexico. It was unusual because 146 weapons-free nations, from all over the world, attended and discussed ways to eliminate the nuclear weapons now held by the Nuclear Nine, who ignored the meeting.

This worldwide movement is concerned with the recent information on the effects of any nuclear detonations that would be distributed around the world. The fireball from a typical U.S. weapon is so hot that it will ignite an area of from 30 to 40 square miles around the planned target. The heat from this giant firestorm will lift a huge amount of soot into the high atmosphere where it will drift around the world. Such a huge black cloud will blot out the sun and cause a nuclear winter by blocking the sunlight from reaching food crops.

(This is an expanded version of a piece that appeared on CounterPunch today.)

It is no secret that Barack Obama is one of the supreme illusionists of modern times. The disconnect between his words and his deeds is so profound as to be almost sublime, far surpassing the crude obfuscations of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Their projections of unreality were more transparent, and in any case were merely designed to put a little lipstick on the pig of policies they were openly pushing. For example, they openly wanted to conquer Iraq and expand the militarist state, they openly wanted to redistribute national wealth to the elite, so they just gussied up this unhidden agenda with some fantasies about WMD and the occult magic of "tax cuts," whereby enriching the rich and degrading all notion of the common good would somehow create a utopia of prosperity (for deserving white folk, at least).

There was a disconnect between their rhetoric and reality, to be sure, but it was easily seen through (except, of course, by the highly-paid credulous cretins of our national media). Indeed, the Bushists seemed unconcerned by how threadbare their lies were; they delivered their lines like bored performers at the end of a long stage run, not caring whether they were believed or not -- just as long as they got to do what they wanted.

By the time you read this, I may have a grandson. May be on my way to spend a week with him. I’m excited yet anxious, thinking of years ago and the way I felt when I was pregnant, unconcerned with gender, caring only about a healthy baby.

Now, the worries are wider.

Where I live, you can’t spit without hitting a Prius. And most of the bumpers display an Obama sticker, a peace symbol, and an anti-fracking message.

One afternoon last week, my neighbor D came over. With a friend and a bottle of wine. I said, “It’s too early to drink.”

D asked, “When do you start?”

I looked at the time on my computer screen and said, “Two forty-three.”

As President Barack Obama tries to pick his way through a minefield of complex foreign policy issues – from Iran’s nuclear program to the Syrian civil war to Israeli-Palestinian peace to unrest in Ukraine – he is beset by incessant criticism from much of Official Washington which still retains the neocon influences of the last two decades.

Indeed, the failure to impose any meaningful accountability on Republicans, Democrats, senior editors and think-tank analysts who cheered on the Iraq War disaster makes it hard to envision how President Obama can navigate this maze of difficult negotiations and trade-offs needed to resolve conflicts in the world’s hot spots.

Successful negotiations require both an objective assessment of ground truth, i.e. a cold-eyed view of the actual power relationships between the disputing parties, and flexibility, i.e. the readiness to make concessions that accommodate the realistic needs of the two sides.

— from Foreign Policy In Focus

Yesterday I posted that the Transform Now Plowshares Three were sentenced for their infiltration and protest at the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on July 28, 2012. CBS News reported Sister Megan Rice’s response to her three-year sentence.

In her closing statement, Rice asked the judge to sentence her to life in prison, even though sentencing guidelines called for about six years.

“Please have no leniency with me,” she said. “To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest gift you could give me.”

“When you go to dig your fields, or make a pot from clay, you are disturbing the balance of things. When you walk, you are moving the air, breathing it in and out. Therefore you must make payments.”

Oh, unraveling planet, exploited, polluted, overrun with berserk human technology. How does one face it with anything other than rage and despair, which quickly harden into cynicism? And cynicism is just another word for helplessness.

So I listen to the Arhuaco people of northern Colombia, quoted above at the Survival International website, and imagine — or try to imagine — a reverence for planetary balance so profound I am aware that when I walk I disturb it, so I must walk with gratitude and a sense of indebtedness. Walk softly, walk softly . . .

Annie Jacobsen's new book is called Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America. It isn't terribly secret anymore, of course, and it was never very intelligent. Jacobsen has added some details, and the U.S. government is still hiding many more. But the basic facts have been available; they're just left out of most U.S. history books, movies, and television programs.

After World War II, the U.S. military hired sixteen hundred former Nazi scientists and doctors, including some of Adolf Hitler's closest collaborators, including men responsible for murder, slavery, and human experimentation, including men convicted of war crimes, men acquitted of war crimes, and men who never stood trial. Some of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg had already been working for the U.S. in either Germany or the U.S. prior to the trials. Some were protected from their past by the U.S. government for years, as they lived and worked in Boston Harbor, Long Island, Maryland, Ohio, Texas, Alabama, and elsewhere, or were flown by the U.S. government to Argentina to protect them from prosecution. Some trial transcripts were classified in their entirety to avoid exposing the pasts of important U.S. scientists. Some of the Nazis brought over were frauds who had passed themselves off as scientists, some of whom subsequently learned their fields while working for the U.S. military.

[click image to enlarge]

Not long ago, journalists were expected to work stories by getting out of the office and tracking them down. The new breed of online journalists who have replaced them sit on their butts, monitoring tweets in the hope that some celebrity or politician will say something stupid so they can trash them. This is what, in an age of minute budgets, passes for journalism.

I was angry today.

I'm tired of hearing crap from Austrians who have decided a bright future in America just isn't possible, unless you are already rich. Screw you and your, "Raise retirement age," "Cut Social Security" and "Stay in your crappy job for health care" viewpoints.  A bright future for the older worker? Nah, just hope you die before your money runs out. That's their idea of us winning.

I'm also angry from listening to great stupid audio from Tom "Kristallnacht" Perkins. He spoke at the Commonwealth Club in SF last week. Audio link.

Earlier this month, Ken Ham, creator and curator of the Kentucky “creation museum,” invited Bill Nye, PBS’s “Science Guy,” to debate “origins.” The debate took place on Ken Ham’s home ground, the auditorium of his museum. Given the protagonists the topic, “origins,” inevitably led to an contest between a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis (“young-earth creationism”) and evolution.

It was, of course, a rout: The Seattle Seahawks vs. Pee Wee football champs. An authentic debate is a confrontation between two arguable points of view. Against Bill Nye’s citation of scientific evidence, Ken Ham had nothing but his Bible and the strange claim that science can tell us nothing about remotely past events. “We weren’t there to see it,” as he said time and again. An astonishing claim that deserves a closer examination, and rebuttal.

U.S. Army Pfc. Steven Dale Green was found hanging in his cell at the federal maximum security prison in Tucson last week. The name may mean nothing to you, but his crimes probably ring a bell: He’s the guy who raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in 2006 after shooting and killing her parents and younger sister. Then he and some other soldiers from a nearby U.S. Army checkpoint set the girl’s corpse on fire.

For a long time, several soldiers attempted to cover up this horrific crime by blaming the act on “insurgents.” Finally, the truth came out and Americans reacted will collective shock. Even though the United States had been systematically invading and occupying multiple Muslim countries for years, and committing all kinds of destructive acts, the Green incident was considered particularly heinous, and he ultimately received five life sentences in prison.

We love computers and other electronics, but — not unlike an addict’s opinion of his dealer — we hate the companies that sell them to us. Now our contempt for Silicon Valley is expanding to include tech workers.

In San Francisco, where locals know the techies best, 30-year-old worker bees are taking as much heat as their billionaire CEO overlords.

Geographical familiarity breeds political contempt.

Just as Zuccotti Park gave birth to Occupy Wall Street’s clarion cry against the predator class henceforth to be known as the Banksters, San Francisco bus stops have become ground zero in a backlash against Big Tech. Oversized SUV-like buses that ferry Google staffers down the Peninsula provoke anger by clogging public transit stops in a city whose crumbling fleet of city vehicles is starved of funding. Private tech company buses have been blocked by protesters who object to gentrification fueled by the soaring rents paid by deep-pocked tech workers. A bus window got smashed. Across the bay in Berkeley, demonstrators even showed up at the home of a Google engineer to hold him to account for his dual role as tech dystopian (he runs Google’s creepy robot car project) and real estate developer.

— from — from TomDispatch

Here, at least, is a place to start: intelligence officials have weighed in with an estimate of just how many secret files National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden took with him when he headed for Hong Kong last June. Brace yourself: 1.7 million. At least they claim that as the number he or his web crawler accessed before he left town. Let’s assume for a moment that it’s accurate and add a caveat. Whatever he had with him on those thumb drives when he left the agency, Edward Snowden did not take all the NSA’s classified documents. Not by a long shot. He only downloaded a portion of them. We don’t have any idea what percentage, but assumedly millions of NSA secret documents did not get the Snowden treatment.

As the world’s biggest online retailer, Amazon wants a benevolent image to encourage trust from customers. Obtaining vast quantities of their personal information has been central to the firm’s business model. But Amazon is diversifying -- and a few months ago the company signed a $600 million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency to provide “cloud computing” services.

Amazon now has the means, motive and opportunity to provide huge amounts of customer information to its new business partner. An official statement from Amazon headquarters last fall declared: “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”

The Central Intelligence Agency has plenty of money to throw around. Thanks to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we know that the CIA’s annual budget is $14.7 billion; the NSA’s is $10.8 billion.

— from Alternet

Here is how it works these days: You start hearing about a big, national problem and then it becomes a drumbeat. First there are a few articles and columns mentioning that such-and-such is a problem. Then a number of articles appear, then a “study” from a “think tank” confirms the problem and sounds the alarm about how terrible it is, and then just as the issue seems to be the only thing you are hearing about a solution is presented. Of course, the solution always involves taking something away from you and giving it to some company or industry standing in front of a billionaire or three. The right question to start asking when you hear about these “problems” is which billionaire is driving this.

Here are five-plus examples of billionaires who use their money to try to get us to think what they want us to think in order to enact a right-wing economic agenda.

If President Obama doesn’t watch out, he could shoot Santa Claus. And if he does go ahead and shoot Santa Claus, that will mean the end of the Democratic Party.

In the coming weeks, the president is expected to announce his new budget plan for fiscal year 2015. And while more than a year into his second term in office, when he should have the Democratic Party behind him, many progressives are worried.

That’s because the last time President Obama put forward a budget proposal, it included a plan to use the so-called “Chained CPI” to calculate Social Security cost of living increase that account for inflation.

According to budget hawks, Chained CPI more accurately takes how seniors in response to inflation, and therefore saves the government money. If the price of hamburger goes up, and seniors start eating chicken, then the government stops measuring the price of hamburger and instead starts measuring the price of chicken, thus avoiding having to help seniors keep up with inflation. In reality, this a sneaky way to cut Social Security benefits over time.

It was late-2011, and with the presidential election a little more than a year away, Daniel Garza, a former staffer in George W. Bush's White House public liaison office, was pretty darned optimistic. Garza had established a project called the Libre Initiative, and he was having success hunting around for funding.

Garza hoped to raise $1 million by the end of the year. According to The Center for Public Integrity, high on Garza's list of prospects was "representatives of the Koch family." Ultimately, "Garza declined to say ... whether Koch interests ... committed any funds yet to the initiative, a 501 (c) (4) which is permitted to keep donors names secret."

Flash forward to the early days of this year, and with control of Congress at stake in November, the Koch Brothers, GOP officials and its surrogates and campaign funders, once again has their eyes on the Hispanic vote.

— from Americablog

In a major change of position, Nancy Pelosi is now strongly against the current Fast Track trade bill, whose passage is a necessary precondition for passing TPP, the pro-corporate, anti-national sovereignty Trans-Pacific Partnership (“NAFTA on steroids” as some have dubbed it).

To learn what’s so wrong about TPP, click the link above, or let Bill Moyers explain it for you here.

The Fast Track bill, called “Camp-Baucus” after its sponsors, House Republican Dave Camp and Senate Democrat Max Baucus, is languishing in the House because Speaker Boehner can’t count on enough Yes votes to bring it to the floor. There are no Democratic co-sponsors in the House, at least 150 Democrats who have signed a letter opposed to Fast Track, and somewhere between 20 and 30 Republicans who are also opposed. And many of the rest are deliberately quiet on it.

Can I be alone in thinking that for someone to die of a self-administered dose of heroin is his or her own fault, deserving condemnation rather than a frenetic flood of adulation?

I had never heard of the film personality Philip Seymour Hoffman who recently killed himself with drugs and attracted so much publicity, but he seems to have been a talented actor. It is said that his portrayal of Truman Capote was exquisitely authentic, and anyone who could do that must be verging on genius. Yet, gifted and prominent as he may have been, is he really a desirable role model for existing or future generations? Was he an exemplar of all that is admirable in living life to the full, in enjoyment of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

You often hear that progressive causes are trapped in competing "issue silos," so it’s worth celebrating when those silo walls crack and people come together, as they did February 14th for VDay, a global day of action against violence against women.

For the last couple of years, the anti-violence movement VDay has called on people to rise and dance on February 14, Valentine's Day. This year, the One Billion Rising campaign was dedicated to rising for justice.

In the lead up, I was invited to host a series of public events, talking about what justice, in fact, might look like. To our panels, we invited leaders from a range of movements. Among others, we heard from indigenous rights activist Sylvia McAdam, who said justice would look like respect for native women, and their land and water. Richmond CA, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said that justice would be people holding corporations to account. Anti-incarceration activist Susan Burton said justice would look like fewer people locked up and more living free from assault and addiction. Community organizer Ashley Franklin said her just world would include safe and affordable public transport. Actress Olivia Wilde imagined more movies with more kinds of smart women, leading. You get the idea.

So the “all the above” energy strategy now deems we dump another $6.5 billion in bogus loan guarantees down the atomic drain. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has announced finalization of hotly contested taxpayer handouts for the two Vogtle reactors being built in Georgia. Another $1.8 billion waits to be pulled out of your pocket and poured down the radioactive sink hole.

A nuke-powered drone strike on fiscal sanity.

While Fukushima burns and solar soars, our taxpayer money is being pitched at a failed 20th century technology currently distinguished by its non-stop outflow of lethal radiation into the Pacific Ocean.