Rep. Barney Frank Offers Legislation to Legalize Marijuana

Yay!

To contribute to Barney Frank's re-election campaign, click here. This tireless fighter for human rights deserves the support of everyone who loves America.

Pass it on.

The Magic Of The Man

.. is simple. Barack Obama speaks as he would like to be spoken to.

He speaks forgivingly of John McCain's ad hominem attacks. When McCain attacks Obama's person rather than his policies, Barack Obama invites McCain to talk about how he would lead the country.

Obama does unto others as he would have them do unto him. How can McCain top this?

It's some kind of Christian magic.

Veep Tango

Both presidential campaigns are now selecting their vice presidents. The Obama campaign's list has reportedly been shortened to three, the most probable of whom is the new Governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine.

Obama-Kaine. For the nation's pain. Or perhaps...

Obama-Biden. Where hope is riding. Or

Obama-Bayh. In my eyeh. Obama-Sebelius. Rhythmic and generous.

ObamaKaine. When the previous administration really needs to go away. Senator McCain would have his very name subsumed.


Meanwhile, Senator McCain has considered former Massachusetts governor Romney, Senator Lieberman, Minnesota's governor Pawlenty, and former Pennsylvania governor, Tom Ridge.

Will the Republican ticket be "M####n-##mn##"? Is this according to God? Or...

McCain-Lieberman. Two senators off on a spree, doomned from here to eternity. Or...

McCain-Ridge. It was a hard battle, the battle of McCain Ridge, but we lost it.


Senator Obama's team will probably make its selection just before the Olympics captures TV coverage. This will force McCain's people to make his choice later or compete with the Olympics.

As the election draws closer, the pool of available veeps for the probable loser may shrink to those not worthy to tie his shoes.

Just don't let the veep select himself.

Stevens Indicted

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska has just been indicted for improperly reporting some largesse that came his way. An old man at the end of his career. Taken down before the Democrats get him.

Inventor of the Bridge to Nowhere, the senator was perhaps descended from the Stevens who named mountain peaks and passes down in Washington State, or the John Stevens whose designs for steamboats were refined and implemented by Robert Fulton, who then became the official inventor. An ignoble end for an inventor.

This takedown of a Senator by a partisan administration run by his own party cannot bode well for anyone else whose skills at fundraising could become a future embarrassment.

U.S. Military Admits A Lie

U.S. Military Says Soldiers Fired on Civilians - - NYT

U.S. Military NOW says that soldiers fired on civilians back in June. Not on terrorists. This killing of a man and two women on their way to work - "gunfire raked their car" - and then the attempt to frame the victims as terrorists enraged many in Iraq, enough to ask us to leave, which is why we are now discussing timelines.

A military convoy took a wrong turn and wound up on the road to the airport. They stopped by the side of the road to fix a problem with a vehicle. As traffic approached from the rear, they fired warning shots, forcing a couple of cars to turn around and reverse course.

But these people were on their way to work. They didn't stop.

Because they didn't stop, force was escalated. They were killed. And the military lied, finding a gun that wasn't there (the car had just been through a rigorous checkpoint) and saying that the car exploded, as if armed, when actually it just burned. Starting from the engine toward the rear, engulfing the victims. As they died.

The intersection of a U.S. military which is at war as best as it knows how to do it and an Iraq civilian population who are just trying to make ends meet in artificially difficult times guarantees problems. We are at war, they are not. We lie for strategic reasons. They own the visible truth.

The military will be

"... reviewing escalation of force procedures “to see if they are meeting needs of the current environment.”"

Given that the military lies when it thinks it can ...

How can their internal courts be trusted? How can a judge accept anything they present in evidence? How can the military confirm that they are not lying?

A government must be trustworthy. And wise enough to know that it must be trustworthy.

Trickle-Up

One of the most lauded tenets of modern conservatism is the "trickle-down" principle - the idea that goodness trickles down from the accumulators of power and money to those of us who have little of either.

Government, the largest accumulator, acquires some our money and spends it to our benefit. The trickle-down theory tells it that a benefit to a bank benefits its shareholders, who then spend the money in ways that benefit everyone else. A flattened-out bank is of no use to anybody. It's rescue must therefore benefit everybody. So the government is now pumping them up. Although it would do good to first patch the holes. That would help to direct the trickle.

That is how it has been up till now.

Now... Internetted America - the digital "haves" - now form virtual networks of friends, develop goals, then actualize the virtual into real groups that meet over coffee or go for hikes.

By actualizing the virtual into the real, the Obama Campaign has created a "trickle-up" organization similar to the government. Money trickles upwards and power trickles downwards with this organization.

But what if the top loses touch with the bottom? It can happen.

Here's the answer. (It loads slowly, so be patient - they're new and small.)

The above example is hosted on a site called SaysMe. This site lets a person send a TV commercial of their choice to a small piece of the market, possibly just their neighbors. The donor can choose the market, focusing to as little as a few blocks. (They do not yet serve Hyde Park...)

Just as Skype used the internet to virtualize the telecom industry, sites like SaysMe virtualize the advertising industry. And close a major circle. They connect the consumer of commercials with the supply.

SaysMe has only a small stable of commercials to choose from now, but by election time it should have more. Former contributors to 527 groups can now buy the commercials themselves. Or create their own. SaysMe does require purchasers of a commercial to sign their message.

With SaysMe and their kind, both power and money trickle sideways.

I approve that message.

The Right Vase

Rocko Bama's

In the clinches

Spreading Hope un

Til it pinches


Oh, if only

His unstintin'

Campaign could find a place for William Clinton

In The Attic

John McCain is

Playing records

On his Webcor

In the attic,


He does not up

Set the decor

Which is slowly

Sliding down into the ocean.

Obama Ends The War

Over the weekend, Senator Obama's visit to war-torn Iraq suggested by his competitor for the Presidency has produced stunning results. Iraq's Prime Minister Maliki, in an interview with Der Spiegel, said that he liked Obama's idea of a 16 month withdrawal timetable.

Someone in the White House must have said "See that everybody gets a copy of this" to an aide, who repeated that request to an intern, who passed it on to clerical for fulfillment. Because suddenly all the reporters on the White House mailing list were sent a copy of the Der Spiegel story. Ooops.

Suddenly the discussion has shifted from how long we will stay to how soon we will leave.

The Bush plan is for American soldiers to stay in Iraq until there's no dust left on the streets, so this acceptance by a trusted puppet of a plan for our departure has blown a hole in Bush's boat. For many that will be all right, because the boat was stranded anyway.

Immediately CENTCOM released a counter-story quoting leaned-on Iraqi spokesman that claimed a mis-translation of Maliki's words had occurred. This was then corrected again by Der Speigel to affirm Maliki's original understanding.

The question is no longer whether, but when.

To seal the deal, Senator Obama has told the Afghan government that we would send more troops to Afghanistan. We are getting out of Iraq so we can win in Afghanistan.

We're winning it for the Afghanis, just like we won it for the Iraqis.

Maybe the Afghanis will let us go home, too.

False Confessions Tortured Out Of Our Prisoners

False confessions. What are they good for?

Depends. If you have to prove your case that the U.S. is under attack by all the people we've bullied over the years, then it may be the way to go. "False confessions from a tortured prisoner at Guantanamo Bay" says one headline, naming names. It may be a way to go too far.

If you have to convict someone in court, a false confession risks convicting the questioner. In real courts, in countries that have freedom, coerced confessions cost big bucks. Ask the City of Chicago.

In the Korean War, the Chinese learned how to make captured G.I.'s say anything.

Back in 1957 the Air Force charted their methods. In 2002 we took the chart to Guantanamo and held a class on how to use them. We then used these methods on civilian prisoners.


From the New York Times:

"Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.” "

We now have some wonderful confessions, many of which prove that the U.S. is under attack. However, not many of them may hold up in U.S. court. And a real court they will see - not the kangaroo tribunal at Gitmo.

We tortured the innocent to make them confess to be our enemies. So we could have enemies.

We, the torturers.

You and I. The owners of our government.

Why do we need enemies?

Often They Float

A 22-year veteran CIA undercover operative is suing in Federal Court to declassify reports he filed from the field proving that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. The reports were suppressed by CIA management, which appears to have been under orders to think differently at the time.

"On five occasions he was ordered to either falsify his reporting on WMD in the Near East, or not to file his reports at all," his lawyer said. So the agent was fired. So he sues.

Much later, of course, the CIA released a finding that Iran had, in fact, stopped their nuclear program in 2003, just as the agent had reported. He was canned for telling the truth. So now he sues again.

The CIA doesn't want to know what it doesn't want to know. (But Google knows everything.)


Guy walks into a bank with a check that somebody from eBay sent to pay for an auction. It is twice what the auction was for. Asks the bank to check its validity. Bank checks. Manager whispers to guards. Police come in and pounce on the guy. Arrest him. Out on $4500 bond, he has to spend $14,000 to get the mess untangled. All because he had a doubt about a check.

The bank never reimburses him for its mistake. Ooops...

"Bank of America refused to reimburse Shinnick, and so Shinnick took his story to a consumer advocate radio show host, Clark Howard. Lots of Bank of America customers were disgusted by BofA's callousness and have closed their accounts with the bank. Howard says they've pulled $50 million from B of A."

In the comments section following the story in BoingBoing, readers pull another $900,000 in disgust at the bank's behavior. That's money that will never return.

Big corporations sometimes forget to tiptoe through the tulips.