O'Keefe's Dilemma

A certain Mr. James O'Keefe the III sits today on the horns of a dilemma. Either way he moves, he gets pricked.

He was nabbed last week with two accomplices dressed in fake phone company outfits, messing with the phones in the Hale Boggs Federal Office Building, in the offices of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu.

His team had gotten so far as to see the bottom of the receptionist's phone. This would have given them its line number and possibly a phone closet distribution box tag identifying the circuit the phone was on. They next asked for entry to the phone closet. That's when their plan fell apart. Asked for credentials, they said that their phone company IDs had been "left in the truck." The three were arrested.

O'Keefe, the leader of the band, had been taking videos with his cell-phone. One of the fake repairmen had a video camera in his hard hat. A fourth conspirator was discovered in a car with a 'listening device', according to the affidavit supporting their arrests.

From the little that is known from the affidavit, several interesting scenarios are possible.

The most benign horn of the dilemma - but most embarrassing scenario for the far right - would be that O'Keefe and company were just capturing background footage for a fake sting video, similar to their Planned Parenthood and Acorn videos.

In both the Planned Parenthood video and the Acorn videos, O'Keefe appears to have used heavy editing and green-screen overlays to delude the viewer.

To make a green-screen overlay, you just record your foreground subject in front of a single-color screen. In the computer, you then click on that single-color background and specify that tint as 'transparent'. Voila, you have an overlay. There are probably little artifacts in these videos of spots where the actress' clothes match for a moment the 'transparent' tint and the background shows through. 'ANDing' the images of the office pre-actress and with actress present should illuminate these artifacts.

To make this defense, O'Keefe will need to show how he has done it before. He will need to show the backgrounds and overlays for his past videos. One would think. That would prove his innocence. But it would end his career. 31 Republican Congressmen sponsored a resolution commending his fake Acorn sting. Suppose they take it back?

If O'Keefe chooses not to use this 'fake news sting' defense, then the listening device in the car suggests a bug was about to be placed. Perhaps the listening device itself was the bug, waiting for a safe route to its destination. If O'Keefe fails to expose himself as a faker, then he gets jailed as a spy or saboteur. Pricked either way. His balloon or his booty.

On Australian Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, Sean Hannity has just interviewed Mr. O'Keefe. The lead perpetrator insisted that his crew was there simply to investigate reports that Senator Landrieu's phone system was broken.

Her phone system had been jammed by a call-in campaign, not broken. The public complaint had been that it was jammed. Not that it was broken.

On Hannity, O'Keefe was sticking by his script. Ergo, he had a script. Ergo, he was there to take some video. But the listening device? Was it there to later capture audio for reprocessing? The listening device has the words "for later" somehow written in its own script.

O'Keefe did mention in a speech a few days earlier that people would soon be hearing about his next exploit. Being public about being up to something suggests no fear of law enforcement issues. Of course, having the son of a U.S. Attorney on your team of invaders, as O'Keefe did, could give a certain sense of fearlessness. But that he should be so public - promising a release date - suggests that he had his process in hand. He was sure that he would have a story.

If not to make faked-up videos to embarrass a Senator, then what else could this crew have been up to, but disrupting or bugging her phone line? That they asked to get into the phone cabinet sort of condemns them. On federal property, presenting themselves falsely as phone men, asking for access to critical systems?

Either way, these boys are facing time. Time for entry under false pretenses. Maybe time for attempted vandalism. Maybe even time for attempted espionage. Short time or long time. James O'Keefe led his followers into a life of crime.

If he keeps upping the ante, he could someday become the ultra-right's Mumia Abu-Jamal. "Free James!!!", they will shout. As he sits on death row.


Mr. O'Keefe, why does your dilemma have horns? Does this reflect on a choice in your life made long ago, perhaps not even by you? Does this seem to have been the best choice for a happy life? Life does await you, one way or the other, happy or un. Would you rather a different choice had been made? What would it have been?

Time gives a person a chance to leave one life and enter another. To go back and begin again from where the good path got fouled up with anger which you didn't dare express. Where a parent maybe stepped on your turtle because they had told you to keep it off the just-cleaned floor. Go there. Time will let you do this.

Time will not be your enemy so much as your friend. Time spent away from the matrix of vain discontent of those who lack job skills to match their intelligence will do you good. Time spent among those who lack the intelligence to fulfill their job skills will be a sea-change. Perhaps you will find common ground and a broader life course.

Over time.

"Cite Your Sources"

Rational discussion. It's fallen to that.

Here is a comment from a McClatchy article on a change in military policy -

"viking51 wrote on 01/30/2010 05:57:27 AM:

Fiftycent,

Nonsense. Cite your Clinton budget numbers and cite where all the 100s of billions of defense dollars were diverted to social programs.

Your conclusion is not fact based but ideology based. If you can't (or won't) cite your sources demonstaraing your assertion, we know your full of BS."

First, note that Mr. viking51 doesn't spell-check. Nor does he remember from high school that there is a difference between "your" and "you're". He speaks for a section of America that lives in verbal land. And he wants factual facts.

Secondly, notice how generic his second paragraph is, how easy to cut and paste. In fact, his whole comment could become a template, good for use wherever bad ideas are sold.

Cite your sources. What is your evidence?

The Activist Moderates Are Coming

Obama drops truth bomb, world is stunned...

One usually thinks of moderation as a form of denial, as for example when one denies oneself that extra sugar cube in the morning coffee.

But yesterday, at a retreat with House Republicans, President Obama modeled a new kind of moderation, activist moderation. He spoke a bit, then had a question-and-answer session. All this was televised nationally. The Q and A session was so stunning that MSNBC promptly dropped their evening news shows to do a long special on it, which they then repeated. Question by question, something not recently seen on TV had unfolded before their eyes.

Continental classroom. Ask Mr. President!

Proving for professional doubters that he can think on his feet without a teleprompter, fielding all questions with warm grace, Obama showed what a deliberative discussion can be. The teacher was ready for their questions. He proved that he listens. He came prepped, as a good teacher should be. He was at the top of his form.

Presented with contrived falsities, he broke them to the core, politely, with all due respect. When facts were omitted to prove a point, he had the facts that contradicted it.

He pointed out again and again how Republicans who assert conspiracy theories box themselves into a null space that separates them from their constituents. One-upmanship in regressive policy leads out onto a plank over water. As the ship sways. In the sun. He basically invited them to come in off the plank.

He pointed to Republican roots in the current health care bill, both in ideas that came from them in the days of the Clinton health care bill and in ideas taken from their current proposals. Obama showed the group that their claim that their ideas were excluded from the process was false.

He welcomed them into collegial discussion. In doing so, he constructed a space where this can continually happen. Because next month, it will likely be the Progressives' turn and then the Republicans' turn again. Dare they hide?

This is very helpful for Republicans. Having been in control for so long, many of them have forgotten how to advise. Here they were advising. Their advice was heard and considered, their questions were answered. Their television exposure was vast, if occasionally embarrassing. They were real for a moment. In the light.

President Obama was born in the day when the civil rights struggle was called the "Integration Movement". He is an integrator. He has just constructed integrative space. Well-lighted integrative space.

While he may be passive as a progressive and so need activist progressives to put wind in his sails, as a moderate he is an activist. A super-wonk moderate activist. A teacher waiting for a class.

A new era has begun, a cycle of rational humanism, reality over rhetoric, and data over delusion. Light of a new day.

Let the sunshine in.

Republicans Are Encircled

Last night during the President's 'State Of The Union' speech, as the Republicans programatically sat on their hands like good Stepford Senators, President Obama used them like a comedian uses a straight man or a prop.

He told his audience how his administration had fulfilled a goal of cutting taxes. Getting applause from everyone but the block of non-participants sitting in prayer on the left side of the aisle, he pointed to them and observed, per HuffPo's Sam Stein, "I thought I'd get at least some applause on that one!" to the delight of the majority of those present.

Republicans did not applaud the cutting of taxes.

When the President spoke of the Roberts Supreme Court's recent decision to let global money buy American elections, the members of this conservative court sat silent and unmoving in the front row, but for Samuel Alito. As Sam Stein recounts, he appears to have mumbled "Not true!". We'll see. There were no blushes, but all eyes were on them.

President Obama mentioned that at the beginning of the year 2000 there was a surplus in the treasury. When he arrived in office 8 years later, there was a massive deficit, the economy was a wreck, and America was trapped in two wars, no hero in the world anymore.

"It was this way when I walked in the door!" he said, pausing for a long moment of reflection.

Republicans were caught between their commitment to non-applause and the fact of the previous administration's failings. There they sat, like chastened boys, waiting for the whip.

In Britain, the notion that our war on Iraq was and is a crime is gaining a serious foothold, as commissions report that they were fooled by false intelligence we sent them. George Bush's war is en route to becoming a Republican albatross that will hang on Republican necks for years. Here in America, while Obama has kindly held back the floodgates of indictments, grand juries quietly work onward. Leaks happen. Freedom of Information requests open files.

Being Republican is becoming harder to explain. Independents have options that Republicans do not.

When Republicans departing their party can explain to the home crowd why they left, then it will fall apart.

Obama Needs Progressives Actively Pushing

Obama needs active progressives to drive him into doing good. He's not going to go out on a limb and be progressive all by himself.

Is he a passive-progressive?

Int'l Corps Shall Rule, Says The Roberts Supreme Court

International corporations are people, too, the Supreme Court has just said, and they should be allowed to buy and sell American politicians just as easily as any rich individual can.

Judge Roberts and the conservatives who rule the Court say that corporations should be free to buy ads touting a candidate. Free to dump lies on a candidate they don't like. Imagine if we could do that in China! China can now do it here.

He was probably thinking of American-owned corporations. But even American-owned corporations are traded globally, have foreign offices and have foreign interests. Not all of those interests coincide with the interests of the United States.

Globally traded corporations are now free to sponsor recall drives of American politicians they don't like, or who don't cater to their wishes. Or to impeach the Supreme Court.

Congress and the White House will probably quickly correct this. Foreign ownership of U.S. corporations must disqualify them from political games. Foreign partnerships are likewise a problem. Could Fiat stage a fiat?

And what about non-profit corporations, where there is no 'ownership' as such? Non-profits are not 'owned', only managed. Their assets go to other non-profits when they die.

Does it also now becomes true that foreign non-profit corporations - charities, environmental groups, political groups - are able to support American candidates? Will the Labor Party of Britain send care packages to its favorite American candidates? It is not foreign-owned, only foreign-managed.

Will any foreign power be able to buy elections in America, so long as it wears a corporate non-profit face and opens an American office?

Will the campaign to impeach Chief Justice John Roberts be global?

Mommy And Daddy Will Always Be Fighting

Mommy and daddy will always fight when their names are The Democratic Party and The Republican Party.

Like myself and so many friends who long for the days before their parents divorced - the days when mommy and daddy were together - and who hope to reconstruct this communion from which they were born, President Obama has an unnatural wish to see reconciliation between systemic opposites.

Every question has three sides - your side, my side and the right side. So said my father, in the days after the divorce. In Congress, the right side always turns out the be the side with the most votes. Every decision is an up-or-down vote. Yes or no. However many political parties we ever have, when the vote comes, some will vote 'yes' and some will vote 'no'.

It is in the design of the system. Mommy - the nurturing, caring political party - will always be fighting daddy - the defending warrior who brings home the bacon, sometimes somebody else's bacon. In a guns-versus-butter world, there will always be a guns party and there will always be a butter party.

President Obama is looking for compromise, hoping to achieve buttery guns and gunnish butter.

Mommy and daddy will always be fighting.

Can We Air-drop Bread To Haiti?

Haitians are starving, in their third day without food or water. Their sea-port is unusable, and their airport has only one runway.

No runways are needed for bread dropped from the air.

The only bottleneck is that a drop has to happen in controlled airspace. Otherwise, flights can come from anywhere with loaves of day-old bread that Americans would otherwise throw away. Tons, one would hope. It can fall like rain if we choose. If bread falls everywhere, the starving people who are everywhere can find it. No lines.

Bread needs no baking, no firewood.

If it falls on you, it won't hurt you. It will help you.

'Move Your Money' - 'Walk Away' - Big Banks Face A Double Play

Big banks - the banks that were recently rescued as 'too big to die' - may be seeing increasing losses on two fronts soon.

First front - 'Move Your Money'. People are closing their accounts.

Many concerned depositors are moving their checking, savings and credit accounts from big banks over to local community banks and credit unions. It's a small act of rebellion, but something any angered depositor can do. Easy to promote, it's become a national movement.

Community banks reinvest one's deposited dollars in one's community. Big banks don't. By reinvesting in community, community banks help stabilize and even increase property values and the tax base. Big banks won't. Community banks remember your face.

Want city government to hold your city together? Want to stabilize the tax base? Put your money in community banks.

Second front - 'Walk Away'. People are walking away from their mortgages.

Mortgage under water? "Walk away," says the Sunday New York Times in the link above.

For those whose houses are worth far less than their mortgage debt, more and more people are simply giving up ever having credit again and walking away. It's the smart thing to do. Those who walk away can rent a similar house more cheaply. Let the bank take back the old house.

But the banks can't sell all the houses they are getting back. From Sacramento, California, to Providence, Rhode Island, the listings on Realtor.com show houses that are going for what the cash market will bear. Get a mortgage on a $40,000 house? Not likely.

There are 50 homes for sale at $40,000 and under in Sacramento. Hello, cash? 220 homes in St Louis, Mo, for $20,000 or less. $15,000 for a Delray Beach, Florida, condo.

As owners walk away from their mortgages, banks can fail.

If they fail, will these banks be worth rescuing again? Or will they now be too small to rescue?

If we keep shrinking them down, do we still have to rescue them?

Washington DC Gets The High

As the year drew to a close, President Obama signed into law a spending bill that among its 5000 earmarks allows the distribution of medical marijuana in Washington DC. Washington residents voted in such a law way back in 1998 with a 69 percent majority, but Congress blocked it then.

Medical marijuana is now legal in 14 states. It restores appetites for people undergoing chemotherapy. It alleviates pain. It unwinds depression. More recently there are indications that it may even cure or inhibit cancers.

But the latest good news about marijuana is that it appears to be anti-aging. It supports the body's own endo-cannabinoid system, which manages inflammation. Unmoderated inflammation destroys cells. That's aging.

Marijuana also appears to help the body make new cells faster. That feeling of youth you got from a toke way back when may have had something real to it.

'Helps chemotherapy patients survive...' - - 'Eh?'

'May cure cancer...' - - 'Oh really?'

'Eliminates wrinkles... - - - 'OhMyG!!! Where can I get some?'

Washington needs you, oh marijuana. They are all very wrinkled. Almost all of them.

And many are depressed and angry from suffering loss. Marijuana helps a person get beyond loss, too. End their depression. Forget their anger. Play a bigger game.

War Crimes Never Die

How convenient. There is no statute of limitations for war crimes.

Any western soldier who brutally killed civilians in the course of our 8-year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against those groups who blew up our biggest skyscraper on 9/11/2001 - any soldier who went beyond the pale - hangs now on a fence. As do his officers. Ever more immobile, ever more exposed.

Remember Blackwater/Xe, the private security force which provides "feet on the ground" for CIA operations, now that the CIA themselves have become mostly interrogators and analysts?

Blackwater personnel have just been freed by the United States judiciary from any criminal responsibility for killing 17 civilians. Back in September, 2007 in Nisoor Square, Baghdad, a Blackwater van got slowed in traffic and their shotguns decided that they needed to blow their way out. Big kerfluffle, we promised we'd see to it. Seems like some Bush era left-overs in the Justice Department botched the case. Can't happen again, now can it?

Free for the moment. But time is not on their side. The information age - doubling their visibility every two years - is not on their side. Identities are added to databases and tracked. Not American databases. The world becomes a cage. Leftovers get tossed when they begin to smell. The world catches up. Will we Americans respect foreign courts? Or will they need to publish rewards for the live capture of our errant idiots?

If American courts do not punish American malefactors, then the world takes over the job. Just as Nazi prison guards were hunted down one by one and brought to justice, so shall the trigger-happy gonzos at Blackwater even more quickly meet their karma in foreign courts. There is no place to hide from karma in a silicon world.

If America is not mature enough to clean itself, then the world will wipe the stains away.

It's a self-cleaning operation. The world has learned to clean itself.