The Hackenblog

Which was not good:

“‘Q: You cut jobs at HP, you know what it’s like to cut jobs, you made tough choices – so are you saying that you want to go to Washington, DC to cut jobs? Is that the argument to the people of California – ‘Send me to Washington, I know which jobs to cut, and I’ll cut them?’ Is that what people want to hear when they need jobs?’

“‘A: Well, look. It’s unacceptable that Californians are living with 12.6 unemployment and federal employees are growing at 14.5% a year. That is unacceptable. So yes, let us start with the basic proposition that the federal government shouldn’t be getting any bigger.’

“‘That’s why, by the way, I would have voted against the financial regulatory reform bill….Barbara Boxer’s solution is to create yet another agency, to hire yet more people.’

“Just so we’re clear, Fiorina believes that in the worst recession in 60 years, government should not be hiring to fill in the gap, that higher unemployment is good, that more federal employees should be laid off so that everyone is miserable.

“What more evidence do we need that Fiorina does not understand how the economy works? She has no clue about the need for government to step in to provide stimulus and job creation when the private sector is not creating jobs.”
Fiorina: Higher Unemployment Good for America, by Robert Cruickshank, July 13, 2010

What planet is Carly Fiorina living on? Does anybody know?

Vote for Barbara Boxer. She’s rich, but at least she gets how the rest of us live.

“California is winning a race to the bottom and our children are paying the price. The report finds that, when compared to other states, California ranks:

• 50th in student to teacher ratios, with 21.3:1 compared to a national average of 13.8:1
• 49th in student to guidance counselor ratios, with 809:1 compared to a national average of 440:1
• 46th in student to school administrator ratios, with 358:1 compared to a national average of 216:1
• 46th in education spending as a percentage of personal income, and
• 44th in spending per student, with $8,826 spent per student compared to a national average of $11,372

“Unfortunately for our children, in the context of our $19.1 billion deficit, California could soon place 50th in all categories. The governor and Republican legislators are refusing to discuss revenue alternatives. Their cuts-based approach to closing our budget gap inevitably places a huge target on K-12 education because it is the largest single expenditure from our General Fund.”
Public Education in Crisis, by Assemblymember Noreen Evans, July 10, 2010

Assemblymember Noreen Evans, Cassandra of California.

Alas.

Good work by the LA Times!

“Orange County pension records show that convicted former Sheriff Michael S. Carona collected about $215,000 last year in retirement payments — and he was just one of more than 400 county pensioners who received more than $100,000 in retirement in 2009.

“Carona, who was convicted last year of witness tampering, remains free on bail pending appeal. But his indictment in 2007 rocked the county and forced major changes to the county’s top law enforcement agency.

“Also on the list is former county Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron, whose investments led Orange County into bankruptcy in 1994. He collected about $142,000 last year.

“The information was released by the Orange County Employees Retirement System following a lawsuit by the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, which advocates for pension reform and has filed similar suits throughout the state. The county retirement agency initially refused to provide the information, saying that releasing the names of those who receive large pensions would compromise their privacy.”
Convicted Orange County sheriff collects $215,000 pension, by Paloma Esquivel, LA Times, July 8, 2010

And people worry that the puny pensions of state employee are going to break us. I, personally, find it more disturbing and distasteful that taxpayers pay millions to felons and fiscal idiots such as Carona and Citron. And this is just 2 of them; the rest of the list probably isn’t prettier.

Can California be saved…from itself?

“Along with Molina, health department officials, physician and hospital trade groups and independent consultants all urged that the new hospital be built to hold 750 beds. Advocates said that capacity was needed to allow the county to provide life-saving care to anyone unable to afford it, as required by California law.”
, by Rong-Gong Lin II, LA Times, June 26, 2010 and additional comments

Oh, it’s worse than that. The original County hospital had about 900 beds and Womens and Childrens hospital down the street from it had about 650 and they’ve both been crammed into a 600 bed new LAC USC hospital. I am told there are only 19 pediatric beds in the whole building. Thanks Michael Antonovich, Yvonne B. Burke, Don Knabe and Zev Yaroslavsky, thanks a lot you westside class warrior idiots. Betcha no County patients are getting beds in Cedars Sinai Hospital. I mean, LAC USC is in Molina’s district, she might know what her own district needs more than anyone else. Geeze.

And before anyone says anything stupid: illegal immigration has nothing to do with this problem. Los Angeles has considerably more than 600 working poor U.S. citizens in need of medical care and no insurance, alas.

Welcome to the Hackenblog: documenting the inevitable since 2003.

Just what the world needs: a $500 cat toy. Of course it’s a guys’ cat. Spoiled rotten, probably (the cat, I mean).

“So, sure, let’s teach Reagan’s legacy. But front and center of that legacy is the AIDS crisis. He stood by as millions died, including some of his supposed friends from his movie days. Reagan’s inaction directly led to many needless deaths. Teach about Ronald Reagan, if for no other reason that our students will never forget an American tragedy. A tragedy whose scope could have been dramatically changed by a rapid response, but was instead ignored because the victims weren’t favored classes.

“And when our students ask about Reagan, sure, by all means, you can talk about how he spent the Russians into bankruptcy, or how he blatantly and illegally defied Congress, but what I’ll remember most about Ronald Reagan will be the action that he didn’t take. And his inaction speaks as much about the man Ronald Reagan as any action, or any myth the Right is trying to build up about him.”
Ronald Reagan Day? I’ll Be Wearing a Red Ribbon, by Brian Leubitz, Calitics, April 9, 2010

Ronald Reagan and Co. were bad for America. Can someone name one Reagan and/or Reagan era policy that hasn’t become a nightmare in the present? Do we really need a day to celebrate dismal, malicious, dire, hateful failure and stupidity? I’m sure our great and glorious State has better things to do. Like saving us all from becoming Mississippi with a surf culture. (And if not, we are well and truly fucked.)

Oh, for those of you who haven’t gnashed your teeth today: Reagan visits Bitburg Cemetery

“In February 1985, then White House deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver made an advance-planning visit to Bitburg. The 32 rows of headstones were covered with snow. Deaver was usually very skillful in carrying out his role as public relations maestro for Reagan, but this time he and his team failed to discover that 49 members of the Waffen-SS were buried at Kolmeshöhe. A decision was made by the Reagan team not to include a visit to a concentration camp, as had been previously suggested by Kohl. The president said he didn’t want to risk ‘reawakening the passions of the time’ or offend his hosts by visiting a concentration camp.”

…reawakening the passions of the time…

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Wm Faulkner

And the real Reagan:

“Ronald Reagan destroyed unions…cut the budgets for education, EPA, poverty programs, etc…engaged in a public policy initiative aimed specifically at screwing over the poor…advanced the prison-industrial complex….hollowed out the Federal government to the best of his ability…ironically espoused the belief that government was the enemy (hello! he was the president *facepalm*)…was reckless and neglectful in responding to HIV/AIDS…tried to cut disabled people from social security rolls (that’s right…disabled people)…HUD grant fraud…Sewergate…”
General Electric Pandering To Right-Wing: Why Are Progressives Silent?, by Angelo, Another War of Jenkins’ Ear, March 20, 2010 (via)

And just to get back to me-me-me and my book, one of the many reasons I bothered to write the Hackenbush novels was to remember what Reagan, his policies, and minions did to hurt artists and anyone in the working class in the 1980s. To name just one here: 8% waitress tax anyone? Because the Reagan administration assumed all waitresses lie about their tips. C’mon, folks, tax cuts for the rich and balancing the budget on the backs of the working poor. It started with Reagan and he got away with it and I’m not forgetting or forgiving.

Angelo, at Another War of Jenkins’ Ear above, asks where the progressives are on this issue. Well, they’re probably too busy dealing with the horrors of the present to post about the horrors of the past. But if you have a Reagan horror story, please post it on your blog and everywhere else you can. Or if you don’t have a blog, you can post it in the comments here. You can also post the link in these comments if that widens the dissemination or something. I love Reagan horror stories, and for your convenience, I have a page of links to them.

“In his interview with NBC’s David Gregory, Schwarzenegger dodged a question about what he would do if the federal government does not come up with extra money to help plug the state’s $20-billion budget gap.

“‘I never really think so much about the Option B, because that’s a loser’s attitude,’ Schwarzenegger answered, saying he would keep pushing until he succeeds.

“He neglected to tell the national television audience that he does have an Option B: a ‘trigger’ he included in his budget plan Friday under which he would eliminate the state programs providing welfare, children’s healthcare and home care for the elderly and disabled, among other cuts, if the federal government doesn’t come though. That plan is unlikely to be approved by state lawmakers, however.”
Governor chides California’s Congress members over federal money, by Michael Rothfeld in Sacramento and Richard Simon in Washington, LA Times, January 10, 2010

Oh my God, how much longer is this poltroon going to continue to pretend he’s governor of California? How much longer can we last with this bs?

“Chicago rats fed a diet of bacon, cheesecake, pound cake, Ho Hos, and sausage began to behave like rats addicted to heroin, and a Minnesota man pleaded guilty to driving a La-Z-Boy while intoxicated. China created a small black hole, and NASA revealed that a mysterious streak of light spotted by onlookers in the night sky above North America was a fortnight’s worth of astronaut urine. Physicists said that the aural jitters picked up by a German gravitational-wave detector may indicate that we all live in a giant and blurry cosmic hologram. The United States, searching for water, bombed the moon.”
Yearly Review, Harpers Magazine, December 31, 2009

Well, I thought it was a rough year, but I thought it was just me.

“As of July 2009, California’s budget shortfall was 49.3% of its general funds. States have considered drastic options to fill such gaps.

“‘I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy,’ said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. ‘I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status.’ (Man, we really are a failed state if we pay creeps like this to do anything governmental.)

“There were no bankruptcy options, and the legislature chose to cut back sharply on education and health care to fill the gap. Mr. Genest already predicts the 2011 shortfall will outpace the projected $7 billion gap. It is a smaller deficit than this year’s gap, but the choices will be more difficult because so many cuts have already been made.

“Mr. Genest estimated that, eventually, 40% of the state’s budget would go to the state Medicaid program, 40% to education, 10% to debt service and 6% to retiree medical services and pension—leaving little left for anything else, such as the state’s corrections system.”
State Finance Directors Warn of More Trouble Ahead, by Sara Murry, WSJ, November 13, 2009

California has really got to:

~ Ban paid petition signature collectors
~ Make referendums more difficult
~ Change the State Constitution for a simple majority for legislative changes (it’s been 2/3 for too long)
~ Factor income into property taxes more than the assessed property value (they’re not as closely related as they might seem [to an idiot])
~ Get rid of the evil 3 strikes law
~ Take term limits off the Ledge (the State ran better when there were knowledgeable people there who had something to lose [yeah, I know everyone hates Willie Brown, but this meltdown didn’t happen on his watch)

No comments on this post. I’m in too much of a fuck you mood as it is.

“‘State controller John Chiang warned today that if legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fail to come up with a budget-balancing package in the next week, he would begin paying California’s bills with IOUs on July 2.’” (via Calitics)

Y’know, this would be funny if it were remotely funny at all. Fuck.

“People with HIV or AIDS and their providers rallied at the State Capitol today to oppose the governor’s proposed budget cuts to a variety or programs which literally keep people alive. During the public comment period of Conference Committee, people told us about the importance of these programs in their daily lives. The testimony below from a brave 24 year old woman born with HIV was especially poignant.”

The Human Cost of Cuts – Linnea’s Story, Budget Blog, June 10, 2009

There has to be a better way to “save” California than letting this young woman die. There just has to be a better way.

“About a month before LAPD Det. Stephanie Lazarus allegedly beat and shot to death the wife of an ex-boyfriend, she confronted the woman at work and told her, ‘If I can’t have John, nobody can,’ according to a lawyer for the victim’s family.

“The victim’s father, Nel Rasmussen, told LAPD homicide detectives about the alleged confrontation and others in the months before the slaying, but he was rebuffed and told by the investigators “repeatedly that he was watching too much TV,” attorney John C. Taylor said today.

“Police have not responded to the family’s claims.”
LAPD detective Stephanie Lazarus allegedly threatened victim in slaying case, by Amanda Covarrubias, LA Times, June 10, 2009

Why are people such idiots? And then some of them have guns, never mind the badge and uniform. Sigh.

By the way, no man is worth doing time for, even if it seems like it at the time, a week later, you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about. Really.

You know you want to know, so just click on the images. No one ever has to know you did. It will be your secret.

(via Furies Publishing)

Arnold can’t do math:

“In the short-term, expenditure reductions in any of these programs (CalWORKS, etc.) have significant implications for the state economy. The multiplier effects for these programs are found to range between 1.05 and 1.44, meaning that output and employment resulting from human services program expenditures are greater than the expenditures alone would suggest.

“In particular, In-Home Supportive Services are found to provide in excess of a 40 percent boost to the local economy. The multipliers for CalWORKs and Food Stamps are also significant and comparable at 1.34 and 1.37, respectively. Other programs, those that provide primarily services and less in the way of cash benefits, are found to have a smaller multiplier effect. The importance of these services, however, should not be diminished by the smaller multipliers that were found. This report discusses the likelihood that service reductions in many of these programs may result in the following: a higher incidence of homelessness, poverty, malnutrition, substance abuse, violence, and negative health outcomes for toddlers and infants. Aside from the toll these harmful circumstances have on the individuals involved, a higher incidence of these maladies produces not only higher economic costs today, but in the future as well. This suggests another sort of multiplier that ought to be included in the analysis – the indirect effect of reducing the demand for services tomorrow by providing them today.

“Finally, many of these programs are funded by federal in addition to state expenditures. These federal dollars are often only available as matching funds to state expenditures. The effect of matching funds was found to raise the multiplier for some state spending as high as 7.35. With matching funds, $1 in state spending translates into between roughly $3 and $5 in total spending on most of these programs. The effect on output and employment, and on the economic stimulus effect of state spending on these programs, is thus significantly magnified.”
SPENDING ON COUNTY HUMAN SERVICES PROGRAMS IN CALIFORNIA: AN EVALUATION OF ECONOMIC IMPACTS (pdf), By Jon Haveman, Ph.D., Beacon Economics, Eric O’N. Fisher, Ph. D., California Polytechnic State University, Fannie Tseng, Ph.D., Berkeley Policy Associates, Presented to Child and Family Policy Institute of California, March 17, 2009 (via, which has more links and is a faster read)

$1 CA dollar can, with matching funds, turn into up to $5 spent in grocery stores, doctors, public transit, etc. in California. I’m not very good at math either, so bear with me:

$1M = $5M, so $500K = $2.5M, $0.50 = $2.50, but $0 = $0, which is what I think the heartless bastard rightwingnuts in California ultimately want. Don’t any of those people have businesses, homes or investments in California? Or, y’know, humanity? Because sinking the whole State to gratify some sick fear and loathing of children, disease and poverty seems pretty crazy to me.

So, really, the only reason Arnold is going after these programs is because they have no powerful advocates. And he’s a heartless bastard placating heartless bastards.

And at a church, no less.

“KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) – A Kansas doctor who was a controversial provider of so-called ‘late-term’ abortions was shot and killed at his church on Sunday, local media reported.

“The Wichita Eagle newspaper reported that 67-year-old George Tiller, a longtime target of anti-abortion activists, was shot to death as he walked into services at Reformation Lutheran Church.

“Police are searching for a white male who fled the scene after shooting Tiller with a handgun, local media reported.”

~snip~

“Tiller’s clinic in Wichita has been the site of mass protests by anti-abortion groups and was bombed in 1985. Tiller was shot and wounded by an abortion opponent in 1993.”
Kansas abortion doctor shot dead at church: report, Reporting by Cynthia Osterman, editing by Anthony Boadle, Reuters, May 31, 2009 (also of note)

Don’t like somebody? Shoot ‘em! It’s the way we live now!

“A former probation department guard convicted of child abuse for letting five minors beat a boy who she wrongly believed had taken her cellphone at a Los Angeles juvenile hall was sentenced to a year in jail.

“Diane Buchanan was also sentenced to four years’ probation. The judge said Buchanan showed no remorse and she was fortunate the victim did not suffer more severe injuries and die.

“Deputy Dist. Atty. Natalie Adomian said that despite her conviction on three felony assault charges Buchanan she never apologized.

“Lawyers for Buchanan told the court she dedicated her life to helping children and her community and was destroyed by the case. In May 2005, Buchanan lost her cellphone at the Sylmar juvenile hall. Another boy at the facility said the victim had flushed the phone down the toilet.

“Prosecutors alleged that Buchanan opened the victim’s cell door and let in five boys to attack the youth. Buchanan did not report the incident or seek medical help for the victim.

“She later found her cellphone in her car, authorities said.”
Former juvenile hall guard sentenced to year in jail, by Richard Winton, LA Times, May 27, 2009

Over a fucking cell phone. This is a very sick woman. What does she do when something serious happens?

For those of you wondering what the hell is going on in California:

“Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, Chair of the Budget Committee, spells out slowly for everyone the structural problems and false assertions about the California budget process.”

(via)

“But the California precedent still has me rattled. Who would have thought that America’s largest state, a state whose economy is larger than that of all but a few nations, could so easily become a banana republic?”

But, Paaaaauuuuuuulllll! It’s not a banana republic! It’s a Libertarian Paradise!

Me, I think it’s more of a dystopia.

“Enter Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian refugee and legal resident of Britain who had found work as a janitor after drug problems derailed his college career. According to his lawyer, Clive Smith of the human rights group Reprieve, Mohamed traveled to Afghanistan in 2001, attracted by the Taliban’s drug-free way of life – which, from my point of view, was a little like upgrading from bronchitis to lung cancer. War soon drove him out of Afghanistan and to Karachi, from where he sought to return to the U.K. But, as a refugee, he lacked a proper passport and was using a friend’s, which led to his apprehension at the airport. Smith says the Pakistanis turned him over to the FBI, who were obsessed at the time with the possibility of an Al Qaeda nuclear attack on the U.S. After repeated beatings and the above-mentioned hanging by the wrists, Mohamed ‘confessed’ to having read an article on how to make an H-bomb on the Internet, insisting to his interrogators that it was a ‘joke.’

“But post-9/11 America was an irony-free zone, and it’s still illegal to banter about bombs in the presence of airport security staff. It’s not clear how the news of Mohamed’s H-bomb knowledge was conveyed to Washington – many documents remain classified or have not been released – but Smith speculates that the part about the H-bomb got through, although not the part about the joke. The result, anyhow, was that Mohamed was thrust into a world of unending pain – tortured at the U.S. prison in Baghram, rendered to Morocco for 18 months of further torture, including repeated cutting of his penis with a scalpel, and finally landing in Guantanamo for almost five years of more mundane abuse. He was just released and returned to Britain today.

“As if that were not enough for a satirist to have on her conscience, the U.S. seems to have attributed Mohamed’s presumed nuclear ambitions to a second man, an American citizen named Jose Padilla, aka the ‘dirty bomber.’ The apparent evidence? Padilla had been scheduled to fly on the same flight out of Karachi that Mohamed had a ticket for, so obviously they must have been confederates. Commenting on Padilla’s apprehension in 2002, the Chicago Sun-Times editorialized: ‘We castigate ourselves for failing to grasp the reality of what they’re [the alleged terrorists are] trying to do, but perhaps that is a good thing. We should have difficulty staring evil in the face.’

“I am not histrionic enough to imagine myself in any way responsible for the torments suffered by Mohamed and Padilla – at least no more responsible than any other American who failed to rise up in revolutionary anger against the Bush terror regime. No, I’m too busy seething over another irony: Whenever I’ve complained about my country’s torturings, renderings, detentions, etc., there’s always been some smug bastard ready to respond that these measures are what guarantee smart-alecky writers like myself our freedom of speech. Well, we had a government so vicious and impenetrably stupid that it managed to take my freedom of speech and turn it into someone else’s living hell.”
My Role in the Torture of Binyam Mohamed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, February 23, 2009

Obama should close the Baghram torture center, too.

“Tamera Jo Freeman was on a Frontier Airlines flight to Denver in 2007 when her two children began to quarrel over the window shade and then spilled a Bloody Mary into her lap.

“She spanked each of them on the thigh with three swats. It was a small incident, but one that in the heightened anxiety after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would eventually have enormous ramifications for Freeman and her children.

“A flight attendant confronted Freeman, who responded by hurling a few profanities and throwing what remained of a can of tomato juice on the floor.

“The incident aboard the Frontier flight ultimately led to Freeman’s arrest and conviction for a federal felony defined as an act of terrorism under the Patriot Act, the controversial federal law enacted after the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

“‘I had no idea I was breaking the law,’ said Freeman, 40, who spent three months in jail before pleading guilty.”

~snip~

“The costs of a conviction can be enormous. In Tamera Freeman’s case, it cost her custody of her children.

“The confrontation on the Frontier Airlines flight to Denver was particularly harsh, recalled Amy Fleming, the flight attendant who told Freeman to stop spanking her children. In a recent interview, Fleming called Freeman the most unruly passenger she had seen in 11 years on the job.

“‘Absolutely she deserved a felony conviction,’ she said.

“But at least one passenger, John Carlson, a defense attorney who was seated near Freeman, said there was no threat. ‘There was a nasty, loud exchange,’ Carlson said. Then Freeman ‘capitulated and offered no resistance. My sympathy shifted to her.’

“A spokeswoman for Frontier said the airline has provided more training for flight attendants since 2001, including classes on ‘ways to calm a situation before it reaches a boiling point or physical confrontation.’

“After three months in jail, Freeman agreed to plead guilty in exchange for being released on probation. A court-appointed attorney told her that a plea deal would be the fastest way to see her children, who had been taken back to Hawaii and put into foster care.

“Her probation required her to stay in Oklahoma City, where she grew up, and prohibited her from flying. Meanwhile, legal proceedings in Hawaii have begun to allow the children’s foster parents to adopt them.

“Freeman has been denied permission to attend custody hearings in Maui over the last six months, court records show.

“‘I have cried. I have cried for my children every day,’ Freeman said. ‘I feel the system is failing me.’”
In-flight confrontations can lead to charges defined as terrorism, by By Ralph Vartabedian and Peter Pae, LA Times, January 20, 2009 (pdf in case it vanishes)

The Patriot Act just makes it easier to grab the kids and funnel them to more worthy indoctrinators. It’s also a graphic lesson for anyone with kids who might want to resist: forget it.

A very useful sidebar widget:

As seen on Seeing the Forest.

Film Drunk’s Trippiest Video of 2008. And, yes, there’s more at the link.

Very disturbing, but you’ll be able to say you saw it here.

Update 122008: Joseph E. Lowery. Well, okay, but Obama, don’t scare a middle aged woman like that.

Rick Warren to speak at Obama’s first inauguration.

Let me understand this: the Democrats did win this election, didn’t we?

I mean, supposedly the Democrats stand for tolerance, fairness, equality, and suchlike, and Rick Warren doesn’t. So why is he speaking at the inauguration and not someone more, well, like the guy we elected President? Or is Obama really like…oh my God, stop, stop, just stop!

“While Hirsch chose to use a champagne bottle and waterfall to illustrate how credit card receivables became asset backed bonds. I feel that a trough and pack of wild hogs would have worked out just as well, though it would have been harder to draw!

“This is only one of the videos in the Marketplace’s collection of Whiteboard videos explaining our current economic situation. Other topics in the series include short selling, defaults, margins and the fallout surrounding a financial crisis. These short informational videos are an excellent way to gain a better understanding of what’s happening in our economy without needing your own personal economist.”
The idiot’s guide to why the credit card crisis is next, by Josh Smith, WalletPop, December 7, 2008

This isn’t just insane, it’s fucking insane. Has debt always been sold as an asset? This is a good explanation of what’s probably coming down the road. We never needed tougher bankruptcy laws. However, we’ve needed laws to leash the credit card companies for decades.

I’m late with the temp stock clerk who was murdered at Walmart and other people injured in the stampede story. I read a woman miscarried due to her injuries, which is equally shocking. I doubt Walmart is doing anything to help his family bury the poor guy, so if there’s a fund to help out, I’ve got a few bucks for it. Or if there’s a fund to hire lawyers and sue the fuck out of Walmart for a wrongful death due to their negligence in crowd control, then put me down for that, too.

Incredible as it seems, maybe Walmart should hire the local police’s Riot Squad for next year. I understand the Riot Squad is usually underemployed on Black Friday.

I seem to recall some horrifying incident like this happening every year in our sales-crazed consumer frenzied society. If stores can’t manage their crowds, maybe it’s time for professional help. Ask local law for the Riot Squad. Blackwater ops even. No, I’m not kidding. I wish I was.

“Pakistani intelligence sources report that Siddiqui was in Pakistani detention until the end of 2003 and that her son Suleman fell ill and died during that time. It is known that terrorism suspects often spend a period of time in the country before being turned over to the Americans. According to the Asian Human Rights Commission, there are 52 secret prisons in the country, into which thousands of Pakistanis are believed to have disappeared since the beginning of the war on terrorism.

“A number of other prisoners held at Bagram Air Base, the site of the most important US detainee camp in Afghanistan, say they heard a woman screaming. Some claim two women were there. The woman was nicknamed the ‘gray lady of Bagram.’

“Elaine Whitfield Sharp, an attorney who has represented the family since 2003, is convinced that Siddiqui was classified as a high-level prisoner and spent five years in a so-called ‘black site’ in Bagram — in one of these notorious black holes in the legal system.”
‘The Most Dangerous Woman in the World’, by Juliane von Mittelstaedt, Der Spiegel, November 27, 2008

If we’re still giving thanks for anything, we can include that we are not the gray lady of Bagram.

I’ll be thankful when Obama ends the war on terrorism and the U.S. stops kidnapping, torturing and raping in the name of truth, justice and the American way.

But right now I just feel sick enough to throw up.

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. suicide rates appear to be on the rise, driven mostly by middle-aged white women, researchers reported on Tuesday.

“They found a disturbing increase in suicides between 1999 and 2005 and said the pattern had changed in an unmistakable way — although the reasons behind the change are not clear.

“The overall suicide rate rose 0.7 percent during this time, but the rate for white men aged 40 to 64 rose 2.7 percent and for middle-aged women 3.9 percent, the team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found.

“‘The biggest increase that we have seen between 1999 and 2005 was the increase in poisoning suicide in women — that went up by 57 percent,’ said Susan Baker, a professor in injury prevention with a special expertise in suicide.”
Middle-aged women drive rise in U.S. suicides: study, By Maggie Fox, Reuters, October 21, 2008

Shit. According to this article, suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S. WTF? I’d put a Bertolt Brecht reference here, but even I think that would be in bad taste.

If Barack Obama is Assassinated The Blood is on John McCain’s and Sarah Palin’s Hands, Fablog, October 10, 2008

“WASHINGTON – A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

“While the treatment of prisoners at detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been the subject of human rights complaints and court scrutiny, the documents shed new light on how two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident were treated in military jails inside the United States.

“The Bush administration ordered the men to be held in military jails as “enemy combatants” for years of interrogations without criminal charges, which would not have been allowed in civilian jails.”

~snip~

“The 91 pages of e-mails and documents produced by U.S. Fleet Forces Command, which runs the military brigs in Norfolk, Va., and Charleston, S.C., detail daily decisions made about the treatment of Hamdi and Padilla, then both American citizens, and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a legal resident. All were designated as by the White House as ‘illegal enemy combatants.’

The White House just threw these men in jail forever, tortured them, and took away their legal rights and the White House got away with it. What country do we live in now?

“The paperwork show uniformed officials at the military brigs growing increasingly uncomfortable and then alarmed that they were being directed to handle their prisoners under the rules that governed Guantanamo.

“The authors and recipients of the e-mails are censored from the documents. They appear to be going to either military or Pentagon legal counsel and policy offices.

“The documents show that some officials at the Charleston brig were deeply skeptical about the mandate that Guantanamo rules should apply in the United States, a decision made by the defense secretary’s office, according to the documents.

“‘You have every right to question the “lash-up” between GTMO and Charleston — it was the first thing I ask (sic) about a year ago when I checked on board,” wrote one official to another in 2006. “In a nutshell, they gave the Charleston detainee mission to (Joint Forces Command) who promptly gave it to (Fleet Forces Command) with a ‘lots of luck’ and nothing else.’”
Documents say detainee pushed near insanity. Light shed on how prisoners were treated in military brigs inside U.S., MSNBC, October 7, 2008

We are better than the past eight years. At least I hope so. Let’s prove it in November by electing Barack Obama President of the United States.

“LONDON (Reuters) – Taliban leader Mullah Omar on Monday urged U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan to withdraw or face a similar defeat to occupying Soviet troops a generation ago.

“In a rare message, posted on militant websites and monitored by the U.S.-based SITE intelligence group, Omar offered a bargain to the U.S.-led forces that drove the Taliban from power in 2001 but are now fighting a fierce insurgency by the Islamist militia.

“‘Reconsider your wrong decision of wrong occupation, and seek a safe exit to withdraw your forces,’ said the message, which the Taliban said came from Omar.

“‘If you leave our lands, we can arrange for you a reasonable opportunity for your departure,’ he said, adding that the Taliban posed no harm to anyone in the world.”
Taliban’s Omar offers deal to U.S. on withdrawal, Reuters, September 29, 2008

Haven’t we been looking for this guy as long as we’ve been looking for his son-in-law? And he just pops up and sends us a message? Weird. Even for me, this is weird.