"Wrecker-in-Chief"

from nader.org:

On October 17th, George W. Bush, signed into law a bill he bulldozed through Congress that, in Senator Patrick Leahy’s prophetic words, would suspend “the writ of habeas corpus, a core value in American law, in order to avoid judicial review that prevents government abuse.” This law, whose constitutionality is in doubt and will be reviewed by the Supreme Court in due time, puts so much arbitrary and secret unilateral power in the hands of the Presidency that the ghost of King George III must be wondering what all the fuss was about in 1776.

If you want more evidence of how obsessively-compulsed George W. Bush is about his wars, their fabrications, budgets and cover-ups, consider his cue card statement on the legislation at the White House signing ceremony. “It is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill he knows will save American lives,” he declared.

Hello! He has rejected all kinds of occasions to save American lives here at home. He has refused to do anything about the widespread and preventable mayhem known as medical and hospital malpractice, while fanatically pushing for restrictions on the right of such victims or their next of kin to have their full day in court. At least 80,000 Americans die from malpractice just in hospitals every year, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.

The same Presidential pen could have saved thousands of more lives and prevented many more injuries were it to alight on safety legislation and larger budgets for reducing job-related sickness and trauma (58,000 lost lives a year) and air pollution (65,000 lives a year) – to name a few categories of preventable violence. But he signaled from the onset of his Presidency that such bills would be opposed from the getgo.

And once again remember his incompetence in letting U.S. soldiers – hundreds of them die in Iraq from the lack of adequate body armor.

At the signing event, Mr. Bush called the legislation “a way to deliver justice to the terrorists we have captured.” To him all captured subjects are ipso facto convicted terrorists. It is not as if his record gives any credence to such fantasies. But he persists in his deception none the less. Out of nearly 700 prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, he has charged only ten after over four years of detention. Ten! Why? Mostly, as military, civilian lawyers and other monitors have said, because the vast majority of these abused or beaten prisoners were innocent from the day of their apprehension – victims of bounty hunters in Afghanistan and surroundings.

clickhereforallofit

I don't have time to write much about this, I just think its a damn good read. If you have second thoughts about George Bush when you hear sound bites on Fox News, just read Ralph.

Cops crash a country show at Walter's

From the Houston Chronicle:

A Houston police officer responding to a noise complaint Friday night at Walter's, a popular music venue on Washington Avenue, discharged his Taser at least three times when a melee ensued after he told a guitar player to turn down the volume.

[...]

[Sgt. Nate] McDuell said [Adam] Stephens, whose guitar was hanging from a neck strap, then used a sexual obscenity and shoved the officer with his shoulder.

[...]

Stephens said he was sideways and singing on the stage just before he turned around and saw the officer, who then shined a flashlight at him and said, "Stop."

Stephens, who denied shoving the officer, said he responded, "Why?"

He said the officer moved closer to him and yelled, "Stop!"

Stephens said he again asked why and that the officer then grabbed him by the neck and forced him to the floor.

Accounts vary, but apparently several people then charged the stage, there was a lot of pushing and shoving, and the officer called for backup.

[...]

[G.M.] Rodriguez suffered bruises and cuts on his arms, at least four people were arrested, a valuable bass was broken. A tall, slender 14-year-old with shoulder-length hair was Tasered, and a University of Houston sociology student doing a "field paper on the music scene" also was Tasered.

clickhereforallofit

I heard about this from my girlfriend a few days ago, but it was second hand from a Hot Topic employee so I wasn't sure if it was true (because that store's specialty is fabrication).

What suprises me the most is that these bands got the cops called on it. WAAAY louder bands have played at Walter's before, like The Casualties for example, who are actually coming back to Walter's this Friday, and I think Youth Brigade played sometime last week.

There's no question that this cop was an asshole and was completely out of line. So I'm not going to discuss that.

My theory as to why the cops targeted Walter's is that they were actually called about an earlier, louder show, the kind that Walter's has more often than these "laid back country" shows. It must have been just a slow night for this cop and he happened to drive by Walter's and recognized the name of the place and heard some noise. Hell, the neighbor who called the cops probably does so every single night! So this Rodriguez character decides he's actually going to humor the neighbors tonight and show up.

I can imagine how confusing it would be for a cop to be so pissed off about some laid back folk rock show.

Here's how it plays out in my head: you're up on the stage playing your guitar, the bright stage lights make it difficult to see anyone in the crowd, you seem to be ignoring the cop because you CAN'T FUCKING SEE HIM, so he gets up on the stage and approaches you; if you're facing away from the crowd (to the side in this case), you probably can't see him even after he comes up onto the stage so you accidentally run into him as you turn back to face the crowd.

Basically, if Stephens really did run into that cop first, it was quite likely just an accident, and this cop flipped out.

I've been planning on booking a show out at Walter's for my loud, rowdy punk rock band, The Drafted. Luck for us, Houston cops would rather raid the mellow college crowd!

Whats wrong with this picture?

From NPR:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters the United States is open to negotiations with North Korea to "keep the crisis from escalating."

[...]

Rice's trip to Asia is aimed at boosting support in South Korea and China for sanctions against North Korea.

clickhereforallofit

Maybe I don't fully understand what sanctions are, or whatever the Bush administration means by "sanctions" these days, but it doesn't seem like a form of negotiation to me. And I think the term "open to negotiations" kind of goes out the window when you're pushing for sanctions. Like, "We're open to anything, but mostly just sanctions." I can't believe Rice is actually trying to make it sound like the administration wants to negotiate.

I guess they really mean to negotiate with South Korea and China about placing sanctions against North Korea. Thats really the only way to make sense of it.

But, how dumb am I being by trying to rationalize something the Bush administration is doing?

Why I'm not scared of North Korea

Its been more than two years now since I wrote a song called "North Korea" for my punk band, The Drafted. The song was about my confusion after I first heard that North Korea claimed to have a Bomb. I couldn't understand why we were invading Iraq because they might be trying to start a nuke program (the first reason we were there) while another country, with a considerably more insane dictator, actually admitted to having such weapons and our leaders essentially ignored it.

The media paid closer attention this summer when they tested those missiles, but now that they've tested this nuke its really gotten crazy, on both sides. I mean, Kim Jong Il is out of his fucking mind. No one is disputing that; the man is insane, but he's not dumb enough to use his weapons before someone else does first. How do I know this? North Korea is all Kim Jong Il has! NO ONE likes that guy! If he tries to take the offensive and nuke another country first, he knows he's going to get creamed by one of the other several nuclear states, no matter who he nukes. Inversely, we can't do SHIT to them now, so we might as well humor them and include them in international dialogue.

The North Korean government has repeatedly said that they developed the nuclear weapons as a defensive measure. With Il's insanity aside, how hard is that to believe? Freaking out about it only displays everyone's belief that they're a bunch of animals, and maybe they will end up using them first if we keep acting that way.

Its like bees. If you don't bother them, they don't bother you. I've had wasps land on me before and I just froze; they fly away immediately. Whether North Korea deserves respect or not, we've got to give it to them now. The only way to get them to listen to dissarmament talks would be for the other nuclear nations to dissarm first, and who expects that to happen any time soon?

No one seems to be looking at the nuclear situation in the same way that I am, maybe I'm the crazy one.

A post from Nader.org

Options For Revision

Imagine the U.S. military – from the soldiers on the ground to the generals – saying publicly what they are thinking and saying privately about their two draft-dodging but bellicose rulers in the White House.

Sometimes, reporters have gathered a few excoriating statements from the frustrated, beleaguered, often body armor-less GIs. One even demanded Bush’s resignation from his barracks in Iraq, which was shown on national television.

There is also the under-reported Zogby poll released in January 2006 –
the only scientifically sampled field poll in Iraq – which showed over
seventy percent of the soldiers thought the United States should
withdraw in a time period ranging from six months to a year. And this
opinion in the war zone was registered when the situation was not as
bad as the quagmire is today.

As for the Generals, their dissatisfaction with Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, goes well beyond his brusque personality into the rigid and mistaken policies from the beginning of this fabricated, illegal war.

Now comes the New York Times reporter, Michael R. Gordon, with a page one story about a forthcoming Army and Marine Corps field manual with a “new counterinsurgency doctrine that draws on the hard learned lessons from Iraq and makes the welfare and protection of civilians a bedrock element of military strategy.”

Some might view this manual – drawing from the experiences of bottom to top military personnel – to be an indirect rebuke of the failed brute, force military policies of the Bush White House. Some may also wonder what took the Pentagon so long to rediscover old knowledge about what succeeded and failed in foreign military occupations. Old knowledge that says reliance on sheer military power, mistreating prisoners, and not safeguarding civilians and essential public services fails again and again.

Well, better late than never. This particular field manual went through many comments, consultations, and drafts before distilling nine “representative paradoxes” of counterinsurgency operations. Their theme is that the more force used, the less effective it is. Staying in touch with the civilian population, instead of staying in compounds, is more effective than a brute force and firepower approach. Dollars and ballots have more impact than sheer weaponry because they strengthen the host country’s restoration of basic services like police, electricity, drinking water, food, health and schools.

Other paradoxes include one that says “tactical success guarantees nothing," and that “most of the important decisions are not made by generals,” but by troops at all levels.

By now you are probably saying, “Isn’t that just repeating the obvious?” Why, yes, but when your dogmatic, messianic commanders are Bush and Cheney, shorn of history, common sense, and critical reactive thinking, the “obvious” has to be conveyed as something new, lest it be seen as what it is – a repudiation of disas trous policies from design to supply to logistics.

click here for all of it

If you're feeling confused about this whole "right and wrong" thing these days when you see all this shit about North Korea and what our responsibility is and whatnot, I recommend paying a visit to nader.org and reading Ralph's latest rants about Iraq.

I haven' read it all, as I write this, but it seems pretty entertaining at least.

I don't mean to blog once a month...

I can think of two people who read this blog, and to you two guys, I'm sorry I never post anymore.

I don't have internet at my house, hopefully once we move to our new location I will be able to get online regularly and with time to do stuff like this. I've blogged from UNO's library before but I've been doing actual work there lately for this "school" thing that I'm signed up for.

Politics: Ummmm, I'm going to be voting for the first time this year. Kind of exciting, I'm casting my govenatorial vote for independent Kinky Friedman for governor of Texas. If anyone has found a reason not to vote for him please let me know; I've read his site a few times and he seems like the best choice, suprisingly progressive. He's not some hopeless joke candidate who's doomed from the start, he looks like he could really win and he's got some good ideas despite his dumb ass ways of relating to dumb ass Texans.

Speaking of elections, I really don't think the Republicans are going down this mid term. Its okay, if they haven't dug their grave deeply enough yet, two more years should be enough to get rid of them for a while.

Keep stopping by guys (John and Ron), I'll get back in the blog habbit eventually. Haha, Ron-John.