Lets hope no one gets this bright idea.

They must attend jury duty.

They can go to jail.

If you live with them for a certain amount of time, you may become common law married to them depending on your state’s laws.

If they give you a black eye, we should see them on Cops.

They can go insane.

They need to eat, drink, and shit.

They should be subject to an inheritance tax when they die.

If they cheat on you, divorce them and sue for alimony and custody.

They should mate, settle down, have kids, and watch them grow up while they retire gracefully.

Do you really believe corporations are people? Well, it’s the law, and the first amendment protects them.

The company CEO dictates policy for how political contributions are disbursed from the company. Tens, hundreds, or hundreds of thousands of people may be earning money for that CEO. But now he decides how their productivity shapes American politics. These corporations are multi-national. If wealthy foreigners, foreign companies or even foreign sovereignty want to get involved, they just have to “buy X amount of whatever” from an American company in exchange for X-10% donations to American political figures. Don’t think it will happen?

Betcha didn’t even think the Great Recession (which I highly doubt it truly over) was gonna happen, didja?

This earthquake is only the latest in a string of disasters, mostly humanitarian, that have hit Haiti since it became the first black slave nation to win its independence, albeit with a heavy penalty that hung around their necks for the next 150 years.

On 1 January 1804, Dessalines, the new leader under the dictatorial 1801 constitution, declared Haiti a free republic. Haiti was the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful slave rebellion. The country was crippled by years of war, its agriculture devastated, its formal commerce nonexistent, and the people uneducated and mostly unskilled.

Haiti agreed to make reparations to French slaveholders in 1825 in the amount of 150 million francs, reduced in 1838 to 60 million francs, in exchange for French recognition of its independence and to achieve freedom from French aggression. This indemnity bankrupted the Haitian treasury and mortgaged Haiti’s future to the French banks providing the funds for the large first installment, permanently affecting Haiti’s ability to be prosperous.

There is much, much more to this sad story, including the United States’ muckery in their situation to their detriment.

People have been fighting for Haiti for years. I’ve personally met Leisa Faulkner, who is again going to Haiti to help. It’s a sad tragedy, what’s happened there in the past days, but with sudden international fame maybe the rest of their plight will receive attention. The poor populace just wants their democratically elected president to be president and not forced to flee from the country time and again. Lavalas!

“Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 ‘maritime companies’ and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,” Mohammed said.

“The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials … we’ve made piracy a community activity.”

You know that tired old saying, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?”

Somalia’s Western-backed government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed is pinned down battling hard-line Islamist rebels, and controls little more than a few streets of the capital.

The administration has no influence in Haradheere — where a senior local official said piracy paid for almost everything.

“Piracy-related business has become the main profitable economic activity in our area and as locals we depend on their output,” said Mohamed Adam, the town’s deputy security officer.

“The district gets a percentage of every ransom from ships that have been released, and that goes on public infrastructure, including our hospital and our public schools.”

Shit man, maybe California needs to step up and pay attention? I mean, we’re fucking broke, so broke we almost went stateless. Think I’m joking?

“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.”

One more interesting tidbit to throw in about school spending and criminals:

The chart … shows an almost ghostly parallel: adjusted for inflation, UC tuition has gone up 5x since 1980. During the same period, spending on corrections has also gone up 5x. As we spend ever more on warehousing prisoners, we’re forced to make students pay ever more for their education. The two lines track almost exactly.

Maybe instead of taxing our students because we’re going broke paying for our criminals…. maybe we should put them to use like the Somali’s have?

Mind you, that’s probably a terrible idea, but… I mean, if we’re actually trying to figure out how to de-state-ify our state….

If this guy actually gets anywhere near popular enough to succeed in a presidential race, I have a horrid fear that he wouldn’t make it to the inauguration.

Found via Mish, talking about the death of Capitalism.

No empire has survived. None. The only question is when.

What has survived? Culture, families, cities. The idea of the rule of law. Corruption. Knowledge, both information and disinformation (see: Corruption).

Man creates and destroys nations with breathtaking swiftness in geological time. Compared to the tribe of man, nations are the blink of an eye.

The only question is when, and chances are you wont know it till it’s on you. You have to realize that, and then ignore it.

One idea that has survived a long time, the idea of democracy, has survived countless attacks over the years.

Part of the problem is “the government.” And not just the way we are governed, but even the idea of “the government.” As if it’s this… thing. This entity that’s sitting over us, like some kind of whimsical father, deciding who shall be punished and who shall be rewarded. But it’s supposed to be us. Yet all we can do is send a letter to a Congressman to be read by an aid, tallied for opinion and replied with formletter for issue X.

Hopefully we can metamorphose democracy into a new, digital, interconnected, actually-by-the-people era.

TL;DR All nations die, humans live, government dysfunctions, maybe facebook is the answer.

My Hero <3

While we may not agree on his deserving of the prize (I think there are better folk out there – hopefully he’ll at least donate the prize money to some charity) I think we all can agree this image is hilarious. Re-spammed from my old friend.

Baucus explained that he liked much about the idea of a public option but that he knew a health care bill containing the provision would fail to win enough support in the full Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster.

I thought having the 60 members of the Senate gave them a filibuster-proof majority? I’m so sick of this. Democrats need to woman up and bust balls on this. I’m talking bigtime payback for being highschool-pranked by the Republicans for the last 16 disgraceful years.

But they, obviously, aren’t in the mood.

As it’s currently practiced, the issuance of currency — a public utility, really — is still controlled in much the same manner by central banks. They issue the currency in the form of a loan to a bank, which in turn loans it a business. Each borrower must pay back more then he has acquired, necessitating competition — and more borrowing. An economy with a strictly enforced central currency must expand at the rate of debt; it is no longer ruled principally by the laws of supply and demand, but the debt structures of its lenders and borrowers. Those who can’t grow organically must acquire businesses in order to grow artificially. Even though nearly 80% of mergers and acquisitions fail to create value for either party, the rules of a debt-based economy — and the shareholders it was developed to favor — insist on growth at the expense of long-term value.

The second great innovation was the chartered monopoly, through which kings could grant exclusive control over a sector or region to a favored company in return for an investment in the enterprise. This gave rise to monopoly markets, such as the British East India Trading Company’s exclusive right to trade in the American Colonies. Colonists who grew cotton were not permitted to sell it to other people or, worse, fabricate clothes. These activities would have generated value from the bottom up, in a way that could not have been extracted by a central authority. Instead, colonists were required to sell cotton to the Company, at fixed prices, who shipped it back to England where it was fabricated into clothes by another chartered monopoly, and then shipped to back to America for sale to the colonists. It was not more efficient; it was simply more extractive.

I find myself vacillating between “no way” and “holy shit” in my reactions to this piece. It’s scary as shit because I see this stuff still happening:

When natives of the Indies began making rope to sell to the Dutch East India Trading Company, the Company sought and won laws making rope fabrication in the Indies illegal for anyone except the Company itself. Former rope-makers had to close their workshops, and work instead for lower wages as employees of the company.

Hemp is illegal in America due to one factor alone: it was competition for the lucrative timber markets of the super-elite back in the early 1900s, because it made more, better and cheaper paper than timber. Less value extraction. So the marijuana scare began, and hemp was banned because it looks the same and ‘could be used to hide marijuana in the fields by evil farmers or mobsters.’

It’s nothing new. The rich and powerful use their means to influence the national-level discourse into a way that’s favorable for them and allows maximum wealth extraction from the lower 99.9% of society.

But competition is the way of life! you say.

It may or may not better reflect the laws of nature — and that it is a conversation we really should have — but it is certainly not the result of entirely natural set of principles in action. It is a system designed by certain people at a certain moment in history, with very specific interests.

Is it? Today we have giant corporations creating all our food, with very little cooperation among men because with machines, one can do the work of hundreds, hourly. We’re told it’s good and efficient, but those hundreds no longer have a way to pay their bills and nothing’s free. All the land is owned, so they can’t just go somewhere that no one is living and start their own farm. We drop the price of food and somehow make more people poorer (especially in relation to the top .1%).

Those 100 people that used to get together and farm together, back in the day before markets, when agriculture was just being invented… If they competed against one another, some of them would die. So they all farmed for the good of the town. For prosperity, because you couldn’t live well without food. Now that food is the least of our worries, somehow we’ve made society more disparate than ever before.

Socialism and communism existed before kings and governments. I’m not saying the quality of life for anyone was great back then. I’m saying it was a fucking necessity to overcome nature. Knowledge has trivialized that feat, and immediately started making gods out of men. Knowledge secret and jealously guarded because it was what set them apart from common, ignorant men. Science has reversed this tide somewhat, but it held back by common, ignorant men liking the status quo.

Nature caused communism, it’s what made us dominant. Complacency with dominance, “bread and circuses” has allowed the rise of powerful men to subjugate society to their whims. The markets were created to allow non-producers to ‘get their beaks whet’ so to speak, on the activity of others, however one wanted to do it. It allow the powerful or lucky to excel, but structures things so that most people have to run just to stay in place.

Good luck with that.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.

The mainstream media in America ignoring the voice of the Freedom press? You don’t say.

Now out of office, [Jacques] Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

Of course, he’s the French leader that pussied out on the Iraqi invasion (and subsequent bloodshed), so he has nothing to say but slanderous lies.

Honestly, this is something I read about ages ago, and I still believe it. Sarah Palin believes believes it – she said we had to hope to God that we sent our troops over there on His mission, for His purpose.

update: uckin ell, forgot the link to the story

GEITHNER: Again the most important thing we need people to understand is working with the Congress we’re going to make sure we do enough to bring this economy back. But you know our job is not just to repair the damage done to this economy, bring growth back….

This was an answer to a question. Geithner was on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, discussing the economy. He was asked a question about how 1.5 million people are going to be losing their unemployment benefits this year (2009, not the next 12 months). Here’s the lead-up to this weasely non-answer:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And that means unemployment will remain high for the rest of this year. At the same time we’re seeing reports that up to 1 and a half million people could be losing their unemployment benefits by the end of this year. Does that mean that the Administration is going to have to look at extending unemployment benefits again?

GEITHNER: I think that is something that the Administration and Congress are going to look very carefully at as we get closer to the end of this year . And that’s going to be one important thing to look at.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We already know that a million and half people are going to lose their benefits don’t we?

They’ve already wasted trillions of dollars and are on the hook for trillions more to our banking and finance and automotive industries.

Where is my 0% interest loan from the government? I couldn’t afford the interest, say, on a loan I got to fix my car to travel to a job (since there are no jobs in my industry within 50 miles of home), if it were at bank rates. If I had billions of dollars, the Fed.Gov would give me a cheap, basically free loan. Since I have zero dollars, the federal government wont give me anything – not even unemployment since I quit my last job two weeks ahead of the whole department getting shit-canned. I’m a male, so I can’t get welfare or medicare or any of that. If I weren’t lucky and surrounded by some really fucking amazing people, I’d've been homeless as of last month (or at the very least would have had to tap my meager tiny retirement savings at a HEFTY penalty and been able to survive a month or two more).

So, Tim Geithner is dissembling. They don’t have any clue as to what to do. They really don’t. They won’t answer that question because they can’t.

They have been wrong every step of the way on how bad things are going to get. Why should we trust them this time? Does anyone have even one reason, other than “They’re the Government?”

At least, so far, we can trust this version of the .Gov to not get us into a useless war for their buddies’ profit.

And why dissembling? Dissembling is a “lie of omission” – he knows what Stephanopoulos is saying is true, but will not admit it. The data is there for everyone to see, they’re just refusing to acknowledge it until after the fact. Keeps up short term hope, prevents people losing confidence in the market right know so Goldman Sachs can keep up it’s profiteering until things go to shit again. Rest assured they’ll be well prepared for the next crash and come out of the pile of shit smelling clean with record profits, record bonuses for bigwigs, and record low taxes payed to the United States that has given them so much.

The company is also hard at work defining a new Terms of Service agreement which will launch in conjunction with new APIs. These will determine what kind of commercial messages Twitter will have rights to monetize via ads. Twitter wants to “take a far reaching license to the content, with two exceptions (endorsement, content profit), and no opt-out.” Twitter also talked about making its API license “more throttled than ToS.”

So yes, Tech Crunch is not experiencing a fail of ethics. In fact, they discussed what they wanted to talk about with Twitter, and while Twitter isn’t exactly happy about it, they’ve agreed to it.

Remember when we told you about how the United States of America enacted laws to keep openly gay men and women from protecting the nation, but made no such efforts to keep out and proud white supremacists from serving in the military? Now it turns out that, while a gay soldier would ostensibly be kicked out for announcing his sexuality on his Facebook page, Aryan power nutbags appear to suffer no such consequences for posting their racist hatred on social networks. Link to 1st article on white supremacy in the military, link to 2nd article on trumpeting their hatred on Aryan social networks with lack of consequences.

Plenty more links to follow in the article linked above. It’s just sad, really really sad, to see stuff like this happening. What a total dichotomy between our self-image and how we actually present ourselves. But that should come as no surprise – my sweetie read an article that said more Americans admit to attending church on a regular basis than Europeans-at-large, we believe more strongly in the institution of marriage and don’t think it’s outdated, and have the highest divorce rate of any western nation. That’s right, our church-going bible-thumping holier-than-thou folks are much more likely to get a divorce than freewheeling areligious European citizens. What exactly does this say about us other than we speak out of one side of our mouths and kiss our mistresses with the other side (whom half the time are gay manstresses)?

One hundred thirty members out of a total 7,906 users [of the social site newsaxon.org] list their job as ‘military.’ Member ‘geisler,’ for example, identifies himself as a ‘human resources specialist’ in the Army and says he wants to ‘find a woman I can settle down with and have a nice, WHITE family (unlike some in the army with all the race traitors).’” Above, user “BounceandBurst” posts that he’s “tired of the destruction of our clean white culture and heritage, the poison of black culture in our society, and the illegal invasion of mexico into our sovereign nation.” This “Proud White man” is stationed at Ft. Carson in Colorado.

Are these the proud men and women we want fighting and dying for our freedoms? Is this okay merely because they don’t stick their dicks in asses or their girl tongues in a vagina?

Republicans lined up Sunday in opposition to a second economic stimulus package, a rare demonstration of unity from an out-of-power political party in search of a rallying cry against President Barack Obama.

Too bad Barack Obama already came out in opposition to a second economic stimulus package last week. So much for rallying cry against Obama, though I’m sure the Limbaugh dittoheads will just naturally assume Obama’s already got a second one ready to go, just got cockblocked by Republicans from making it happen.

Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has anounced she will resign as governor of Alaska on 26 July and not run for re-election.

Mrs Palin’s term of office was due to end in 2010.

I, for one, smell a rat here.

“I’m taking my fight for what’s right in a new direction,” she said, as her family looked on.
Mrs Palin did not reveal what she intended to do after leaving office, and did not give an explicit reason for her decision not to run for re-election.

But in a written statement, she made it clear that once she had decided not to run again, she did not want to hang on in office until her term expired.

“Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional Lame Duck status in this particular climate would just be another dose of politics as usual, something I campaigned against and will always oppose,” she said.

What this doublespeak probably means is: “Once I decided I was going to quit when my contract was up, the contract for an office I swore an oath to uphold, I decided to give up.”

You know all those scandals that dogged her, that she admitted no wrongdoing over? I think there’s something brewing that she can’t weasel out of while in-office, so needs to be out of the public eye before that storm hits and wrecks her chances of being GOP choice 2012. Or, she doesn’t want to be in office while grubbing for the presidency.

But seriously, what kind of politician just quits most of the way through for no reason? Is she going to do that if she’s elected to another office. “Well, I know it’s 3 years from when my term expires, but I’ve decided not to run for re-election for (senate/president) so let some other guy do it. PEACE OUT YA’LL! Fight the Good Fight!™”

I mean, for shit sake she’s resigning a full year and five months before she’d even BECOME the lame duck, Alaska’s next election is in Nov 2010, well over a year and a half before she’d actually be replaced.

I couldn’t have said it better, so I’ll let Stewart say it. He even says “epic failure.”

I read a popcorn book by Richard K. Morgan called “Market Forces” about capitalism run barbarically wild. It focuses on an investment firm’s “conflict investment” division. Where they basically invest in troubled governments and the rebel forces / freedom fighters etc. Supplying weapons futures for money, etc. They also do Mad Max road combat for promotions and, you know, whatever. Balls to the wall. Somehow I see this future playing out with the CIA hiring the wunderkinds who ruined our economy. I mean, how better to ruin our enemies than by investing in them?

Honduras experiences a coup d’etat. This time, we didn’t do anything. The term “Banana Republic” was coined from our interference in Honduras’ politics and history.

Republicans continue to harrumph about Sotomayor, while fucking Latin American chicks on the side, as usual. In a blow to Sotomayor, the mostly while male Supreme Court of America overturned her decision and claim that white firefighters were discriminated against because of race… by other white men running the city. And that’s the Supreme Court decision. This cannot be contravened except by a future supreme court. All that discrimination that folk fought against in the early part of the 20th century has been re-institutionalized by white fear of “reverse discrimination.” Probably the best P.R. coup of the 21st century.

Besides, there is a worrisome rumor going around that the Basij are marking the doorways of those households that continue to call out “Allah Akbar!” at night, a reverse Passover.

Pretty scary Reich III-esque stuff possibly going on. But you can hack that. It’s easy. Copy their marks onto every door. Every time they change the mark, copy that.

Another thing about protesting. Chant against the government until the Basiji and troops arrive, then start chanting pro government slogans and claim to have arrived to chase off the anti-government protesters. Accuse pro-government protesters of having been recently chanting the anti-government slogans.

Deliberately create a greater fog of war than is currently there. Hack the system of who is who and who thinks what. Create pro-dissident twitter feeds and blogs etc in the name of pro-government folk who don’t internet.

Jam the fuck outta that culture. When they can’t tell who’s what, they’ll have to just arrest everyone. They will not trust one another, because one thing a dictatorship has aplenty is paranoia.