Obama bribes Orly

via my friend @D_R_Bastiches:

You know that Obama Campaign email everyone got, inviting you to a dinner with the President? As in, the email everyone but EVERYONE in America (anyone who ever contributed to the Obama campaign, or to any Democratic candidate, or anyone who ever drew a breath in the continental United States during the Obama Administration) got? Orly Taitz thinks it was meant for her. Oh yes she did:



the mass email Orly thinks was her personal invitation to dine with a frightened President Obama, surely to beg her to cease her efforts to unmask him as a gay Kenyan communist redistributionist.



What Can Joshua Treviño Teach Us About Humility?

So this happened:

August 15th: The Guardian announces the hiring of murder advocate Joshua Treviño.

Later that same day Treviño, responding to criticism of The Guardian's move, acts like an arrogant asshole.

August 24th: Upon realizing that they had just hired an amoral sociopath, and seeing that no article of his would ever be free from the stench emanating from all his previous writings, The Guardian takes a page from the Harriet Miers saga and fires Treviño's ass for something supposedly unrelated.

September 13th: The Guardian publishes an article by Max Blumenthal, who apparently has something that Treviño desperately wants, if Joshua's abrupt departure from all things Internet at the very moment of his firing is any indication.

Lesson: don't be a dick in victory, or you may be humiliated beyond expectation in defeat.

Is Wanting Due Process for Assange Being a Rape Apologist?

You may have seen this 1898 cartoon before. An extended French family sits down for dinner, and the head of the family says: "above all, let us not discuss the Dreyfus affair". The second and final vignette shows the same family violently pummeling each other, with the caption "they discussed it"

The Assange affair is pitting natural allies against each other, and it's curious how one side doesn't recognize this at all. To begin: if Julian Assange did what he is being accused of, he's a rapist. Any form of non-consensual sex is rape, and yes, this consent can be withdrawn during the act, and consent can be withdrawn if the situations have changed, i.e., consent for sex with a condom does not apply to sex without a condom, and that decision is made by the person who gave the consent in the first place, who can withdraw consent not just when the conditions change, but whenever the hell she/he damn well pleases. And it should go without saying that only a conscious, awake person can give that consent. 

But we have a system of laws, a woefully imperfect one that lets many rapists go free (and that's without even taking into account societies where the victims of rape are not believed, are encouraged to stay silent, have their claims downplayed or are somehow talked into thinking that it didn't really happen, or that the fault was theirs, a completely different conversation that needs to take place) but one where people are convicted by courts of law, in a due process that involves evidence, testimony and a strong, spirited defense. Julian Assange has been charged with absolutely nothing, let alone convicted of anything. That this matters not at all to so many people I love and constantly agree with is disturbing to me (see cartoon above). Even Augusto Pinochet got due process of law, and he had been charged with the most egregious human rights violations (like this, this and this, allegations which I know were true, as my father narrowly escape his clutches and had to move to a different country just to stay alive). Simple old age was enough to let an unrepentant mass murderer go. By the exact same country. Of course the argument will be that Pinochet shouldn't have been let go, but no one is arguing that due process was not followed). I don't care what Assange's lawyer has said, I care what Assange has been charged with and convicted of. Due process of law, of which seeking asylum is a part, as Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Guardian.

I find it astonishing that people I like and respect, who know history, who are skeptical of government entities' true intentions behind the façades, ignore these things completely when it comes to Assange. I understand the natural revulsion that we feel towards doubting a rape victim's story or intentions, but sometimes it is possible indeed for people to make false claims. Yes, once you accept someone might have lied about sexual assault you may have to face some men's rights moron who will use that to cast aspersions on all victims of sexual assault. So be it, the truth is more important. There has been a series of horrific assaults against gay people here in the United States as of lately (as of always, perhaps, but lately it seems to have picked up steam. Follow my friend @CS999 who has had the sad task of documenting them thrust upon her, and who may very well disagree with me on the general premise of this post). One of those, not too long ago, turned out to be false, some idiot got himself hurt and decided to use the real suffering of real victims for his own purposes, and lied to all our faces. Of course it makes it harder now, of course every gay-bashing imbecile can now point to this case as evidence that "teh gays are faking it" but the truth is more important, so be it. Many gay people are the victims of horrific assaults inflicted of them based on nothing more than their sexual orientation, and yes, some of them have not been, but have falsely claimed to have been. This only makes the task harder, it does not diminish the real suffering one iota, but it perfectly proves that some people will have no problem using the very real suffering of very real people just to advance their personal, petty causes, and recognizing this isn't an affront to the real victims, it doesn't make your attitude towards them callous or indifferent, it simply takes the vileness of some people into account.

Curious that Assange, whom the US government really wants, and who may have already been secretly indicted here, is accused of rape, the one thing that would turn people who should be his natural allies against him. Had he been accused of murder, people would wonder if it was self-defense, or if the charges were even true. Had he been a right-winger accused of rape, his allies, already sporting an indifferent, blame-the-victim attitude towards sexual assault, wouldn't give a rat's ass and close circles around him and support him fully. But Assange's allies are on the left, among people who take sexual assault seriously, people who will not just refuse to give sexual assault a pass, but who are loath to even be seen as having a neanderthal attitude towards sexual assault. Because if you doubt that the accusations are true, you are lumped in not just with those idiots who tend to doubt all assault claims, but with those (also idiots) who are saying that even if true, the allegations against Assange do not constitute rape. Some people lie about violence against gays. And some people do lie about sexual assault. Among those who may potentially be victims of false accusations, Assange should be at the top of the list. To ignore the reasons why he is truly wanted is simply ludicrous, as is pretending that this is all about the United Kingdom and Sweden. It isn't. It is all about the United States, and Wikileaks. To roll your eyes at some semi-literate idiot on the Internet who thinks the CIA and Obama are conspiring to install a microchip on him and declare a New World Order isn't the same as admitting that yes, the CIA does exist, it does conduct operations, that it does have paid agents, that its tentacles reach far and high, that the US Government wants Assange really bad, and that Sweden has shown itself to be a timid coward when dealing with the US. The accusation is exactly perfect. It could be true (in which case he is a rapist), but if someone wanted to railroad someone like him, that's how they would do it, and that reason alone should justify a healthy skepticism; a sophisticated mind should be able to simultaneously juggle that skepticism along with still keeping an absolutely unforgiving attitude towards any and all forms of sexual assault. That the natural revulsion that Assange's natural allies feel toward sexual assault (and even more than that, towards doubting anyone making an accusation of sexual assault) is robbing Assange of vital support and perfectly pitting so many who would otherwise be with him against him, should raise an eyebrow. And raising an eyebrow does not make you a rape apologist.

On Florida's stand-your-ground law.

In the early hours of Tuesday, March 6th, 2012, just a few days after Trayvon Martin was executed by child-murderer George Zimmerman, a man named Seth Browning shot and killed a man named Brandon Baker in Palm Harbor, FL.
Not only do I live in Palm Harbor, not only was Brandon murdered in front of the home where I lived for two and a half years (until I moved out to get married and start a family) but I had known Brandon for quite a while. His long-time girlfriend Amy was first a friend and then a coworker for many years. His twin brother Chris dated another friend, and independently from them, I've known their sister Brandy for more than eleven years. It is always expected to call the deceased a good man, but Brandon genuinely was one. He was warm, he was polite, he was hard-working, and he was the nucleus of a group of people who really needed him and loved him. I know this doesn't sound like much, but he never failed to ask me about my son, about my family, always in a way that made me comfortable to go into details, which doesn't usually happen when one dude asks another dude about his child just to fill a gap in the conversation. I have mastered the art of not being seen by acquaintances at the supermarket, mall or sporting events (my loathing of small talk and chit-chat make this necessary) but I never avoided Brandon and actively sought him if I saw him. In short, I thought he was a good man long before his death.

At first sight the killing of Brandon Baker and that of Trayvon Martin don't have a lot in common. Brandon, at 30, was seven years older than his killer, probably a couple dozen pounds heavier, and the same race. But that's where the dissimilarities end. According to news reports, Brandon was driving erratically when Browning, an off-duty security guard (read: wanna-be cop, vigilante, just like Zimmerman) chased after him, presumably to write down his license plate. With the vigilante tailgating him, Brandon pulled over (within sight of the safety of his home, actually on the side road leading to the apartment complex where he lived) and went to confront Browning (who for some reason had also stopped his car. Why? If all he wanted was to get a license plate, why couldn't he just get it and leave?) and was soon joined by his brother Chris, who had been driving behind them the whole time, with Amy in the passenger seat. Instead of just leaving, seeing how he had no business there whatsoever, Browning pepper-sprayed the twins, and then pulled a weapon he was licensed to carry (just like Zimmerman) and shot Brandon, killing him.
Like Zimmerman, Browning was interrogated but never charged. All the information we have of him comes from a previous arrest (h/t @JC_Christian) and he will be cleared by the same stand-your-ground law that has allowed Zimmerman to escape punishment. Let us be clear: Seth Browning sought this conflict, he created it, he invited it, he shot someone and stole a life, yet he is (and will continue to be) a free man. In fact, his freedom is not even in dispute.

This isn't a post meant to highlight that "it happens to white people too, and why isn't CNN covering their story?". Not at all. Trayvon Martin was a child, out on a candy run and on the phone with his young girlfriend, a child that was brutally executed by an animal who will hopefully someday get what he deserves. Brandon was a fully-grown adult who had been driving erratically (I'm told he too was on the phone with his girlfriend, with whom he just had a fight and who was riding closely behind him, and that that was the source of his erratic driving, but it's possible he had been drinking, which makes his situation much more serious than Trayvon's, but never worthy enough of him losing his life) [UPDATE: Brandon was not driving erratically nor was he on the phone, and phone records confirm this] and as far as I can tell, the police did not cover anything up or lied to the press or Brandon's family.
No, this is a post to highlight the insane brutality of the stand-your-ground law, which turns every yahoo with a gun into a potential vigilante, all he (or she, but let's face it: he) has to do is claim he "felt threatened" (a claim as subjective as "it's cold outside" or "purple is my favorite color") and then he can commit murder with impunity. That this law was wholly owned and pushed for by the NRA is so obvious that it barely needs telling.

If you think that these two murders are not enough, check out this other horrifying story, in which a man was shot and killed in front of his eight-year old daughter. Find out why he was killed, by reading the first three paragraphs, and if the reason doesn't send chills up your spine, you are not human. Just like the other two killers, this man waited for police next to the corpse of his executed victim, and was questioned and released.

There cannot be hope for this country while its citizens are being openly slaughtered with impunity and their murderers sheltered by laws passed by pusillanimous cowards wholly owned by the NRA. It's just not possible.

Troy Davis, Blackwater, and Justice Not Served.

If Troy Davis wanted to be a criminal and get away with it, being at the scene of a murder in the South while flagrantly sporting black skin was certainly a dumb thing to do. What Mr. Davis should have done, of course, was get a job with Blackwater.  Had he done that, Mr. Davis could have gotten away with things such as  multiple murder, weapons smuggling, child prostitution, money laundering and tax evasion, and there would have been no need for bothersome consequences such as convictions and imprisonment.
In September of 2007, seventeen unarmed Iraqui civilians were murdered by Blackwater employees with no provocation, for the hideous crime of being in the way of a State Department convoy that, to be fair, must have been in a pretty big rush. Machine guns, grenade launchers and perhaps even a helicopter were used to slaughter these enemies of freedom.
So what happened to the five Blackwater employees who were charged with weapons violations and voluntary manslaughter (not murder) in a 35-count Justice Department indictment? Well, they had given statements to the State Department that could have been used against them in the prosecution, but since State would have summarily fired them had they refused to give said testimony, their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination were deemed to have been violated and a federal District judge tossed the charges out. This year the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit opened the door for the Justice Department to revive the prosecution of four of the five men originally indicted, but the DOJ has yet to act on it. There is, however, no doubt that the justice system has worked in the favor of these despicable murderers, and society freely accepts that if testimony was coerced out of a person, such testimony is invalid even if tossing it out benefits a clearly guilty party or otherwise hinders their prosecution, so important is the value of clean, clear, convincing testimony in a court of law.

Troy Davis was convicted of murder and sentenced to death on the strength of the testimony of nine witnesses who claimed to have seen him commit the murder (no physical evidence ever linked Davis to the crime, and the murder weapon was never found) and I will be the 1,000,000th person to remind you that seven of the nine witnesses have recanted their testimony; the eight person is Sylvester Coles, who has been implicated in the crime himself, thought by some to be the actual killer.
While it might seem arbitrary to link the Blackwater prosecutions to Troy Davis, they showcase the unequal treatment given to testimony considered to have been tainted, a difference that post-conviction is extraordinary; nobody is arguing the veracity of the Blackwater employees' testimony, simply that the statements themselves were improperly collected, and while there is no evidence of coercion either, just the appearance of impropriety and even a hint that the statements were not entirely voluntary are enough to toss the entire testimony (and with it, the whole case) out, even when it means leaving seventeen murdered people with no justice (and also, of course, leaving the murderers of seventeen people go unpunished). If even the hint of involuntary testimony is enough to toss a case out, what about the recanted, repudiated testimony of seven out of the eight uninvolved witnesses whose testimony was not just important but actually crucial in sending a man to death row? Yes, Troy Davis had been convicted, but that is another arbitrary distinction, since the ultimate goal of the justice system should be the application of justice, and not the relentless defending of the State of Georgia's conviction rate.

There's a story arch in the TV show 'The West Wing' in which an assassination attempt is made on President Bartlet's life, and later on they find out that it had actually been an attempt by white supremacists on the life of Charlie, the president's body man, a black young man who was dating the President's daughter.  Long after the fact, when Communications director Toby Ziegler meets with the President and they discuss how they can't shake off what happened, Bartlet says "We saw a lynching, Toby. That's why it feels like this". If Troy Davis is executed, it'll take a long time for many of us to get over the disgust we will feel with our system, our society and even our country, which is expected whenever a flagrant and appalling miscarriage of justice takes place; but the fact that it will be an innocent black man killed by a State with a long, troubling history of racial hatred despite the absolute lack of any convincing evidence, despite the recanted testimony of virtually everyone who testified against him and even the testimony of jurors who convicted him in the original trial, will make it feel like a lynching. That feeling won't be going away any time soon, and the trust eroded by this awful, disgusting and unfair betrayal of justice might not ever be recovered.

An Australian looks into what we pay for our healthcare

My Australian friend Toby is fascinated with the health care debate in America, especially by the enormous disparity between what we pay and what we get in return, and he has written a post with all the numbers. Take it away, Aleksandr Ivanovich:

 "...in 2008, the US spent $7220 per capita on healthcare (all figures in 2011 USD).  This represents 17.4% of GDP.  More than half of that is what Americans are paying privately.  Every woman, man and child in the US forked out more than an average $3610 for private healthcare and almost the same again indirectly through tax.

Second place in the staggering statistics department goes to the Netherlands, who spent $4241 per capita, or 12% GDP.  Unlike the US, the Netherlands has a universal health care system, and only about one-sixth of that is in the private sector.

In twenty-third place is Australia, possibly the best match for the US in health after Canada.  After all, Australians eat roughly much the same amount of rubbish, watch a similar amount of terrible television and speak (mostly) the same language (but without the weird accents).  Australia’s figures for 2008 are $3445 per capita or 8.7% of GDP, below the OECD average of 9.5% GDP.

Keeping in mind this total is the private and government sectors  combined per capita, and yet it’s less than what the US pays privately per capita.  Despite this, Australians on average live longer and have better health outcomes than Americans.  The OECD data demonstrates Australia’s universal healthcare system is more efficient than the US private fend-for-yourself system and more effective.  Surely that can’t be right?  Believe me, the healthcare system in Australia isn’t exactly a shining beacon of efficiency, no matter how hard or magnificently those at the coal face work.  How can such a sector, two-thirds funded by governments (i.e. Australian tax payers), be better than the equivalent private sector in the US, the land where the consumer rules?..."

Read the whole post.

Hey Ron Paul, what about the children?

Paul Krugman nails Ron Paul and his fans' passion for death, but what about the children?

"The day after the debate, the Census Bureau released its latest estimates on income, poverty and health insurance. The overall picture was terrible: the weak economy continues to wreak havoc on American lives. One relatively bright spot, however, was health care for children: the percentage of children without health coverage was lower in 2010 than before the recession, largely thanks to the 2009 expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip. 


And the reason S-chip was expanded in 2009 but not earlier was, of course, that former President George W. Bush blocked earlier attempts to cover more children -to the cheers of many on the right. Did I mention that one in six children in Texas lacks health insurance, the second-highest rate in the nation? 


So the freedom to die extends, in practice, to children and the unlucky as well as the improvident. And the right's embrace of that notion signals an important shift in the nature of American politics."