Winding up

Last week, I noted this quote from Josh Marshall, editor of the liberal Talking Points Memo:

"Basically everything Barack Obama has done since coming into office has been to unwind the thicket of commitments, practices and open wars begun under George W. Bush." 

Now here's Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, speaking at a forum on US foreign policy over the weekend:

“You're thinking we're winding down. You think we're out of Iraq? Maybe boots and uniforms we might be, but we're probably 30,000-plus strong contractors. You think we're downsizing in Afghanistan? We are. Military. We're still 100,000-strong contractors."

In other words, basically everything Barack Obama has done since coming into office has been to wind up (and institutionalize) the for-profit thicket of commitments, practices and open wars begun under George W. Bush.

I wrote something

The George W. Bush Presidential Library opens this week in Dallas, Texas, so I decided to note a few facts -- like a million deaths in Iraq, for example -- that you won't find inside of it. Go read what I wrote, you.

Basically

I came across this quote today from Josh Marshall, editor of the liberal Talking Points Memo, while doing some research for a column. It's a good one.

"Basically everything Barack Obama has done since coming into office has been to unwind the thicket of commitments, practices and open wars begun under George W. Bush."

Smart take, career wise. But I bet the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Guantanamo Bay have a different one.

Tax Day

“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.” 

-- Gore Vidal

Otha fish

It ain't easy

Be a hero

Strange times

Life is hard and full of sadness so why not say "fuck it" and dance?

The war on drugs: unhooded

"You've got African-Americans, you've got Hispanics, you've got a bag full of money. Does that tell you–a light bulb doesn't go off in your head and say, 'This is a drug deal?'" 

-- Assistant United States Attorney Sam L. Ponder of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio

The enabling opposition

My latest column for Al Jazeera addresses progressive Democrats and their faux-opposition to murder by drone. Check it out, kid.

Cop / Killer

"The 21st century police officer should be a person who is aggressive, ever vigilant and possessing exquisite empty hand skills, while being a highly trained good-hearted killer with people skills." 

-- "Why cops should be dangerous," Lt. Dan Marcou

Marcou is a retired cop from Wisconsin. He's also an author. Indeed, his "second novel, S.W.A.T. Blue Knights in Black Armor has been acclaimed for its depiction of police as they really are, modern knights." As they really are.

The Hollywood Stars

Tom Tancredo and me

Back when I was a confused 22-year-old, I tried to be a straight, just-the-facts-ma'am reporter, covering Congress for public radio stations across the US. I quickly learned that I hated it, in part because I had to interview people like former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo and pretend that I didn't find him to be a terribly pretentious fascist for wrapping his xenophobia in concern for the survival of Western Civilization (and then have to argue afterwards with my editor over whether we could refer to his hard-line anti-immigrant platform as "hard-line").

Now a confused 28-year-old, I have escaped Hollywood for Ugly People and now just work in regular Hollywood, which unlike the nation's capital is at least superficially attractive. And yet, I still can't escape Tom Tancredo. Earlier this week, I had to reach out to him for a possible segment on immigration. He was unable to attend, but his response did reduce my distaste for him by 0.00001 percent:

And now I wait.

[The context: Tancredo promised to smoke a "marijuana cigarette" if Colorado legalized pot.]

You know what

It's Friday

And thank the gods for that.

Rape outside of marriage

Henry David Thoreau preachin' it back in 1849:

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

An appeals court in California proving his point in 2013:

We reluctantly hold that a person who accomplishes sexual intercourse by impersonating someone other than a married victim's spouse is not guilty of the crime of rape of an unconscious person under section 261, subdivision (a)(4).

Out of wedlock sex: Wrong. Out of wedlock rape: Well, it's complicated.

(via @cowofevil)

Adios, 2012

(via @AlUCanEatShrimp)

A matter of shared sacrifice

Speaking to The Middle Class today, Barack Obama made a promise, pledging not to pursue spending cuts "that will hurt seniors, or hurt students, or hurt middle- class families." Such is the state of liberal politics today: the most our recently reelected progressive president is willing to offer his supporters is a pledge not to actively harm them.

Of course, being the head of an empire that feeds on death and consumer debt, the president didn't even really offer that. Instead, the sentence containing his grand promise continued, clarifying that Obama only meant he wouldn't harm the middle class "without asking also equivalent sacrifice from millionaires or companies with a lot of lobbyists, et cetera."

"[I]t’s going to have to be a matter of shared sacrifice," he added.

So, in exchange for cutting your grandmother's already inadequate Social Security, a Fortune 500 CEO will -- no, let's go with "may" -- be bumped up to a higher tax rate, which could require as many as two to three additional billable hours for their accountant to successfully evade. No one, least of all our secretly Marxist commander in chief, will point out how the middle (and lower) class already sacrifices its claim to the country's abundant resources to the capitalist class, which the state grants monopoly privileges over what ought to be our shared abundance.

Seems about right.

Me irl

Off to see The Pharcyde (with Fatlip) and Souls of Mischief tonight. I have a better life than you.

Ha Ha: This is what I get for being a jerk.

'The System'

I recall something Miguel Littín told me five or six years ago. He had just filmed La tierra prometida in the Ranquil valley, a poor region of Chile.

The local peasants were "extras" in the scenes where there were masses. Some of them played themselves. Others played soldiers. The soldiers invaded the valley, and with bloodshed and fire, threw the peasants off the land. The film was the chronicle of the massacre.

The problems began on the third day. The peasants who wore uniforms, rode horseback, and shot blanks had become arbitrary, bossy, and violent. After each day of filming, they would harass the other peasants.

-- Eduardo Galeano, Days and Nights of Love and War