Coach K loves the chuckers

My die-hard Terp days are long behind me, but if any of that spirit remains, it delights in today's message: Coach K sucks.  Burying Harden and Love behind the inferior Bryant, Westbrook, Williams, and Anthony was bad.  Instead of going small, why not go big?  Chandler and Love are both awesome, and James is awesome at the 3.  You can play Chandler, Love, and James in the frontcourt, and then Durant/Harden and Paul in the backcourt.  That lineup plays amazing defense, giving up nothing easy inside and still having huge size and speed on the perimeter.  They get every rebound.  And the efficiency of that lineup on offense would be spectacular!  Instead we get all those chuckers.

BO sez urrybody wants to be like USA USA USA USA!!

I dunno dude, Canada laughs at you pretty hard.

BO sez like whatever, they're totally jealous.

a picture and a poem

Democracy don’t rule the world
You’d better get that in your head
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that’s better left unsaid

-Bob Dylan

on sense and senselessness

One of the verbal tics that's most in evidence now is the catechismal insertion of the adjective senseless before the word violence. What kind of violence was it, Mister President? Sensless violence. You see, when you are the plenipotentiary of the world's foremost death machine, when you are ordering, literally every day, the killing of human beings, the destruction of homes, the bombing of farms and factories, then obviously you can't just go out and condemn violence. You have to condemn "senseless" violence. You can't condemn killing. You have to condemn pointless killing.

IOZ

The American Government, plenipotentiaried by a constitutional scholar who promised to lead the most transparent administration ever and to support whistleblowers, has now been brutally caging Bradley Manning for 500 hundred days for the alleged "crime" of exposing government crimes. While major newspapers are proposing Manning as their Nobel Peace Prize nominee, the actual Nobel Peace Prize winner caging him employs a secret government committee that puts Americans on kill lists, refuses to show any evidence to even attempt to justify their murderous plans, then sends killer flying robots to execute the hits on men (who totally said bad things!). And probable innocence is clearly no obstacle government machinery of death.

Help me make sense of this!

REMARKABLE!

Reading the Times is funny:

It is a remarkable feature in the Arab world these days how little Al Qaeda actually comes up in conversations.

And the opening sentence is good, if only because it exposes BO's death worship.

obama's position, as i understand it

the last vestiges of decency in the us government must be slashed, or else the world will end! also, MORE WAR MORE WAR MORE WAR MORE WAR MORE WAR MORE WAR MORE WAR!!!!!!

surely it is our words, not our violence, that causes this violence

All the respectable liberals are supposed to be blaming the violent rhetoric of the political class for the Arizona killings, presumably because that makes it all the Republicans' fault. Mister Smith takes a swipe at this, as does IOZ. It strikes me that Arthur Silber had the best response, but it was written almost four years ago.

If the question is what does the US political class do that inspires violence, I suppose their violent rhetoric might be a concern, but surely a distant one.

We've bombed, invaded, and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, and we're threatening Iran with the same. We're conducting half-secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and who knows where else. Hundreds of thousands of people, the vast majority non-combatants, are dead as a result. We provide weapons and support for brutal regimes around the world and flagrantly disregard the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. We spend more money on war than the rest of the world combined (while our healthcare system is a joke, and our education system and infrastructure rots away). Thousands die and millions more are in cages because of our stupid war on drugs. We torture and kill prisoners, including our own citizens.

Insane violence is what the US political class is all about.

update: good stuff, Jack Crow

more on Wikileaks

Wikileaks is giving me more hope than any political organization/movement I can remember. I see a few main reasons so far to support what they've been doing:

1.) The information they've made public has revealed numerous previously unknown instances of corruption and crime in the US, Australia, Kenya, Iceland, Peru, and other places. I'm particularly impressed with all the dirt they've uncovered about the US Government in their most recent release. A quick sample:

• Bush and Obama used the US State Department to pressure the Spanish and German government not to investigate torture (and death) of their citizens at the hands of US agents.
• Obama is conducting a secret war in Yemen that has killed dozens of civilians, and his State Department has lied to cover it up. One strike targeted a US Citizen, consist with Obama's claimed power that government can order the murder of its own people without any judicial due process.
• Hillary Clinton ordered US diplomats to do all kinds of spying on UN leaders - gathering fingerprints, DNA, iris scans, credit cards, frequent flier numbers, computer passwords and encryption keys, etc. This shit is very illegal under US and international law.

These crimes just wouldn't be uncovered by the mainstream press without Wikileaks. Bush was able to get the New York Times to delay publishing the story (for over a year!) about Bush's illegal warantless surveillance of telephone communication by US citizens. Wikileaks is uncovering similar stories by the handful, and getting the mainstream press to publish them.

It might sound weird to be so enthusiastic about these things. But what I'm enthusiastic about is the disclosure, not the crime. Given that these crimes have happened, it is definitely a positive thing that they be made public, and that wouldn't be happening without Wikileaks.

2.) Their overall strategy is brilliant. Contrary to the popular idea that they won't matter because in response to these leaks, the government will just lock down information even tighter and then go right back to doing the same shit, there is good reason to think that these leaks will genuinely disrupt government operations. This is because government is essentially an authoritarian conspiracy - "conspiracy" not in the crazed Hollywood sense, but with the more mundane meaning of a network of associates working together and whose plans are not fully public. Making leaks a part of their communications environment makes it harder for them to operate, because they either have to become more secretive, making it more difficult to operate and thus less efficient in their operations, or less secretive, in which case their actions will outrage people and inspire greater popular resistance. Wikileaks' tactics have also been brilliant, but I'll just leave it at that for the sake of brevity.

So many groups who claim to care about the kinds of things I care about have no clue how to actually make positive progress in the face of brutal opposition, and in fact they often fail to even recognize who their opposition is. This group seems to have a real sense of how, and against whom, to fight!

3.) The response to what they've done is revealing the ugly workings of power.

• Wikileaks hasn't been convicted of, or even charged with, any crime. Yet the US Government has pressured Amazon.com into cutting off their website (which Amazon hosted). Paypal, Visa, and Mastercard have refused to process funds transfers to Wikileaks. Banks are freezing their assets. These are all lawless, state-sponsored, politically-motivated attacks on a journalist organization.
• Bradley Manning, who allegedly was the source of these leaks from inside the US military, is being held in solitary confinement, and not allowed visitors. This is a severe punishment (certainly psychological torture) despite not having been convicting of any crime, and despite Obama's campaign pledge to increase protections for whistleblowers.
• Various high-ranking government figures are calling for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to be killed, labelled a "terrorist", or charged with treason (absurd, as he's not a US citizen) and Assange was apparently also being held in solitary confinement in the UK (on very fishy sounding charges of weird sex crimes). He was recently granted bail release, but the (Swedish?) government is appealing that ruling.
• Media and political figures endlessly repeat a series of blatant falsehoods, e.g. "Wikileaks has blood on its hands," despite not a shred of evidence that anyone has come to harm because of the leaks (aside from the accused leakers), or "Assange isn't a real journalist because he just publishes documents indiscriminately" when in reality, for the recent leaks he's published fewer than 1% of the documents obtained, and only after the New York Times published nearly all of them.
• The US Government has sent absurdly authoritarian memos to all of its employees warning them not to read any of the leaked material, despite being available on literally thousands of websites, including the sites of major newspapers, since the material is still technically "classified." Universities, noble progressive institutions of truth that they are, have sent similar memos to their students. The US Air Force is blocking the New York Times.
• The US Attorney General says the Justice Department is investigating Assange despite him not being American or in America, and despite there being no laws that he's broken.

All of these things are so obviously corrupt and hypocritical. Officials of the US Government, an organization responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere over the last few years, accusing anyone of having "blood on their hands" would be funny if it weren't so disgusting.

Again, it might sound weird that I'm so enthusiastic and hopeful about an organization that is being so viciously attacked, and inspiring such a disgusting authoritarian backlash, but the intensity and open criminality of those responses is a measure of how threatening Wikileaks is to the corrupt people who hold all this power. They're willing to look like bloody fools just to try to stop the damage.

4.) Wikileaks is inspiring others to action: not just polite protest, but cyber-attacks on the bottom line of corporations who have sided against Wikileaks. When their site got shut down, thousands of other sites popped up to mirror Wikileaks. Their ability to win other groups to their cause is impressive and encouraging.

There are a few different worthy sub-causes to which I'm considering donating:

• Wikileaks itself
• Julian Assange's defense fund
• Bradley Manning's defense fund

But there are some problems. It is hard to get money to some of these groups because of the crackdown. Also, it would be reasonable to fear reprisal, like being charged with "material defense of terrorism" or some crazy shit like that. I'm trying to get a better feel for my options.

vote for change? impossible

American elections, in a nutshell:

Americans out of work, out of income, out of homes and prospects, and out of hope for their children's careers are angry. But the political system offers them no way of bringing about change. They can change the elected servants of the oligarchs, but they cannot change the policies or the oligarchs.

Another key point:

The control of the oligarchs extends to the media. The Clinton administration permitted a small number of mega-corporations to concentrate the US media in a few hands. Corporate advertising executives, not journalists, control the new American media, and the value of the mega-companies depends on government broadcast licenses. The media's interest is now united with that of the government and the oligarchs.

On top of all the other factors that have made American elections meaningless, voters cannot even get correct information from the media about the problems that they and the country face.

killers and thieves suck each other off

via GG:

MILITARY OFFICERS TOUR JPMORGAN -- JPMorgan Chase yesterday hosted about 30 active duty military officers (across all branches and agencies) from the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va. The officers met with senior executives, toured the trading floor and participated in a trading simulation. They discussed recruitment, operations management, strategic communications and the economy. Aside from employees thanking them for their service as they passed by, they also received a standing ovation on the trading floor. Said one officer after a senior JPM exec thanked him for his service: "We promise to keep you safe if you keep this country strong."

"Innocent until proven guilty" is meaningless: Captain Hope-n-Change Orders the Murder of an American

So, The Obama has decreed that an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, must be "killed or captured."

An "American Official" who wouldn't give his name says: "The United States works, exactly as the American people expect, to overcome threats to their security, and this individual - through his own actions - has become one. Awlaki knows what he's done, and he knows he won't be met with handshakes and flowers. None of this should surprise anyone."

I think that the American people expect that accusations by cowardly government officials who won't even give their own names as they talk tough about handshakes and flowers aren't the same as a conviction in a fair trial. But he's right that none of this should surprise.

Let's be very clear about this: Obama can simply say that someone is a "security threat" and then order them to be killed. A political leader who issues unilateral death sentences is a despot, not a fucking servant of democracy. I'd say "fuck you, Obama" but that might make me a security threat, so instead I'll just give a big fat YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY AMERICA!!!!!

"amazing"

I've seen this in a few places, and it seems worth repeating here.

KABUL, Afghanistan — American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but in no instance did the victims prove to be a danger to troops, according to military officials in Kabul.

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

Later in the article:

The persistence of deadly convoy and checkpoint shootings has led to growing resentment among Afghans fearful of Western troops and angry at what they see as the impunity with which the troops operate — a friction that has turned villages firmly against the occupation.

They hate us for our freedom! turns out to be correct — our freedom to kill them with impunity. Sorry, "what they see as" our freedom to kill them with impunity.

here's what school is really all about

Maryland teacher calls police when her 13 year old student refuses to say the pledge of allegiance.

We need men with guns to deal with the threat posed by a child who won't swear fealty to a bloody fucking rag on a stick. Bow before the altar of the state, lest the state's hired goons drag you away.

It's a bad time to be an American these days...

celebrate Constitution Day with me!

Today is Constitution Day. The "Constitution" was some document that some old dudes in goofy wigs wrote a long time ago. People used to believe that the purpose of the Constitution was to limit the powers of the federal government. Isn't that cute? Luckily we've made a lot of progress since then and now we know that the Constitution ensures more important things, like allowing George Bush to start wars of aggression and Barack Obama to order his employees to committ murders. Yay Constitution! Yay Government! YAY America!!!!

give up

among all the things that take themselves seriously, is there anything more fuck-yourself-in-your-own-asshole-with-your-own-cock-and-complain-about-the-pain retarded than politics in the US? jesus ass-fucking-with-his-own-cock christ!

blood-drenched war criminal dies

Robert McNamara, dead at 93.

Rather than read that link, read Chomsky's take on the man.

via D.P

accidental email

I think it had been over two years since I stopped getting political emails from my family, but I got one this week. Below is the original email and my response. For previous editions of this fun little game, see here and here.

-----

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

By Lou Pritchett

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I k now nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because yo u have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett


Note: Lou Pritchett is a former vice president of Procter & Gamble whose career at that company spanned 36 years before his retirement in 1989, and he is the author of the 1995 business book, Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat.

Mr. Pritchett confirmed that he was indeed the author of the much-circulated "open letter." “I did write the 'you scare me' letter. I sent it to the NY Times but they never acknowledged or p ublished it. However, it hit the internet and according to the ‘experts’ has had over 500,000 hits.

----

Obama scares me too, for a few of the same reasons. These 3 in particular:

>You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild
>and irresponsible spending proposals.

When the Republican Congress moved in lock-step to pass everything
Bush/Cheney told them to, they were rightfully criticized by Democrats
as mindlessly following executive orders. Now Democrats are doing the
same thing. In many cases they're actually saying that they oppose
the legislation that they're voting in favor of, but believe it is
more important to support "their" President. It is hard to see what
the point of Congress is, from a check-and-balances perspective, if
they just do whatever the executive says. It scares me to see how
easily people in positions of extreme power will cynically invoke or
ignore important principles at their convenience.

>You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view >from intelligent people.

I find this scary too, and this is true of all presidents in recent
memory. More on this later.

>You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

The media is highly deferential to power. Bush had an abysmal
approval rating for much of his presidency, and still the media
refused to call him on his blatant lies and multiple crimes against
humanity. A popular president like BO will get and even easier time
from the media, which is pretty damn terrifying. Just like Congress,
the mainstream media has abandoned any adversarial function it should
be performing, if it ever actually served one at all.


That said, the rest of the list is fairly insane. What does it say
about the author that he can begin a list with "I know nothing about
Obama," then go on to list 19 things he knows about Obama? He claims
to even know Obama's deepest feelings and desires (e.g. "you falsely
believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient"). I guess if you
can simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs, you can believe
pretty much anything, regardless of reality, which partially explains
the craziness here.

I won't address everything point by point, though I'm tempted, but
there are two general themes of his list that I'd like to comment on.
The first theme concerns these items:

> You scare me because you lack humility and 'class',
> always blaming others.

> You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned
> yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you
> refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who
> wish to see America fail.

> You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the
> 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

The mainstream American media allows a certain a spectrum of opinion
about American foreign policy. On the right/nationalistic/

reactionary
extreme is the opinion that the US Government (hereafter "USG") is a
force for pure good in the world that is always perfectly morally
justified in anything it does and is always selflessly trying to
spread freedom and democracy across the globe. On the left/liberal
extreme is the opinion that the USG is a force for good in the world
that always acts with the purest intentions, but that has sometimes
gotten carried away in its quest for spreading freedom and democracy
and in a few isolated incidents has made regrettable mistakes. That
is the spectrum of opinion that is allowed in the US media (I say
"allowed" because editors and their bosses self-censor, not because of
any state censorship.)

The far right side can't stand even the suggestion that the USG has
ever done anything wrong, and so anyone who ever acknowledges American
misdeeds is instantly part of the "Blame America First Crowd," and
endlessly beaten over the head with this slur. This is objectionable
on several different levels.

One level of offensiveness is the inability or unwillingness to
distinguish between a group of people and their rulers. Is "America"
a nation of 300,000,000 people or the comparatively tiny group of
people that control the USG? To criticize the actions of a government
is not the same as criticizing the people of the nation, especially a
nation whose government often acts against the wishes and interests of
its population, as ours does.

So what would it mean to "wish to see America fail"? The overwhelming
majority of "radical extremists" who he's characterizing this way are
those who object to the actions of the USG, some of whom maybe even
wish for the dissolution of the government. But that doesn't mean
they wish harm on the 300,000,000 who live in the US; they think those
people would be better served with a different social arrangement.

Conservatives like Mr. Pritchett claim to value limited government.
They loved Reagan's "the government is the problem" line and supported
Gingrich when he led a shut down of the federal government in
opposition to Clinton. One would think such people would be cautious
about slinging accusations about "wishing to see America fail." But
given the breath-taking contradiction he chose to lead off this
tour-de-force screed, I don't suppose that connection has ever
occurred to him.

Beyond that, it should be noted that Obama himself is well within the
mainstream spectrum of opinion. And nobody within the spectrum
"blames America first." They all assume that America has noble
intentions, and any misdeeds they reluctantly acknowledge are taken to
be aberrant: it isn't really our fault because we were trying to help
but got carried away, or a few bad apples ruined it, or those
ungrateful Iraqis weren't willing to accept our help, etc.

My final note on that matter is that at no point does it have anything
to do with reality-based argument. There's no attempt to understand
the world, no argument as to why Obama's alleged "blame America first"
is factually incorrect or illogical. It is simply a smear designed to
demonize and avoid intelligent debate. If, as I would contend, the
unmistakeable reality is that foreign policy of the USG is not and
never has been about spreading freedom or democracy, and that it has
repeatedly immorally destroyed innocent lives around the world, should
we not acknowledge this as our first step to correcting it? (Not that
Obama does so.) Yelling "BLAME AMERICA FIRST" eliminates that
possibility, which is of course the entire point of yelling it. And
you have to yell it even at the people on the left end of the
permissible spectrum so that people outside it to the left (i.e. the
reality-based community made up of the vast majority of the rest of
the world) are ignored. And this is from the same guy who complains
about someone "refusing to listen or consider opposing points of view
from intelligent people."

So that wraps up my first general theme about discussion of American
foreign policy and "blame America first."

My second comment on general theme concerns the subtle bigotry running
through many of those items above plus these:

>You scare me because after months of exposure,

> I know nothing about you.

> You scare me because I do not know how you paid
> for your expensive Ivy League education and your
> upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

> You scare me because you did not spend the formative years
> of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

> You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the
> Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing,
> conservative points of view.

Again, America is a nation of 300 million people, the vast majority of
whom can name an immigrant among their recent ancestors. The idea
that there is a single American culture or that spending 4 years of
your childhood in another country is necessarily sinister is
incoherent at best. It strikes me that when you combine that
xenophobia with the innuendo about mysteriousness about his life and
finances, it taps into the same pockets of fear and anger that in less
polite company express themselves as overt racism. Combine THAT with
the "Blame America" nonsense, and you get "Obama is a secret Muslim
working with the terrorists to destroy America, because after all he's
a nigger with a funny name so it is obvious." The conservative
commentators he listed regularly invoke this kind of bigotry, often in
not very subtle ways, and certainly deserve scorn. (Not that Obama
actually "demonizes" yet alone "wants to silence" them).

I suppose I'll leave it at that for now.

fuck the police

Shit like this happens every single day.  Agents of the state use violence against peaceful people who merely wish to assert their basic rights.  Obey or else.  What a fucking joke America is.

hiding in a spider hole

In reference to how the supreme court thinks its pretty much just fine for school officials to strip search little girls to make sure they don't have any WMDs tylenol hidden in their panties, I'd just like to second IOZ's point: public schools are prisons for kids.

Is there any imagined threat that doesn't justify a US Government invasion of some kind?