Nate's Place

Dissipating Our Power

2012-01-06T21:56:00.000-08:00

Political opinion is informed on how one attributes weight to only a few criteria. Conservatives hold authority and loyalty above fairness and consequence. Progressives kick authority, and seconarily, loyalty, to the curb in favor of fairness and the consequences of actions. The old chestnut is "Liberals fall in love, conservatives fall in line." It's not surprising that no matter what remedial damage control and repair to the state of the nation our President is able to achieve, his supporters remain disappointed that more hasn't been accomplished. Liberals question authority and pay closer attention to the current fairness quotient and how the state of things effect status of all the crises all around us. Liberals squabble a lot among ourselves. And, that disspates much of the energy and attention that might otherwise be focused on changing things.

The difficulty challenging Obama "apologists" and apparently disappointed Democrats who might be labelled cronically malcontent is that there are huge repositories of information and details to which none of us are privy that would change everybody's outlook on the matter.

First of all, the reality of our bicameral legislative system and the separation of powers makes it inherently difficult, by design, to make huge changes.That's why it's taken the Republican party, actually since Nixon but shifted into 2d & 3d gear under Reagan, and into overdrive by GWBush, decades to reach the level of inside power, overwhelming support of irresistible money, and relentless pressures on every representative to toe the (literally) Corporate line or face annihilation. And, you can't plausibly suggest that corporate stongarms are limited to the Legislature. Look at how the Supremes subverted the Constitution to place GWBush into the Oval Office in 2000. Look how mercenary contracts have taken over huge swaths of military support once fulfilled by enlisted personnel. Notice how former special forces and special ops retirees become executives among armament manufacturers, switching to lobbyists, some running for and winning legislative offices, branch off to create and run mercenary armies for hire on the world market. See how Wall Street execs take posts with various regional Federal Banks, back to the boardrooms, spend a few years in International banking, European national banks, and back to the Fed or Cabinet portfolios/undersecretary positions. Are you really telling me you can't envision regular channels relaying warnings to incumbents to play by the long established rules or lose a parent/sibling/spouse/child to some unexplainable accident? A warning by well placed insiders under secret obligation to well heeled moneyed interests is all it takes. Withdrawal from Afghanistan is delayed, closure of an offshore detention center, unhampered by the Constitution and unbound by civilian courts, is canceled, corporate owned news outlets fail to point out false equivalences, political non sequiturs, mischaracterizations of fact by adversaries, outright Right wing fabrications and Republican doublespeak in daily reports...and on and on. We are demonizing each other which is exactly how the powers-that-be want it. The only solution is to force transparency of government machinations, the reversal of Bush era (and current administration) secrecy, and holding each and every representative accountable each and every day on each and every issue.

These corporate funded, elite few have been setting us up and have been controlling us for a very long time. They're very good at it. Just as they can't ship all eleven million undocumented Hispanics back over the border, they can't threaten the entire electorate. Nor, can they keep us fooled forever, try though they may. Their subterfuge only lasts so long, and the longer it's applied the more gently the pushes have to be. They bit off 'way more than they could chew, 'way too fast for their own good with their boy George W. who just couldn't tell from appropriate, from just enough or too much and who may have actually believed the magical thinking, snake oil formula they were pushing was real. For all their cash, they only have so many votes, and their buying power is the least effective its been, thanks to the likes of OWS, Pacific Radio, some on MSNBC, Jon Stewart, Current TV and a host of alternative news sources, for a very long time. They win when we stay quiet and complacent, or when we're too busy arguing among ourselves. Our only viable course is to quit this internecine squabbling and focus on the true threats to our representative democratic republic: Wall Street, Armament manufacturers, telecom giants, Big Oil/Pharma/Finance, The Federalist Society (description), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)...All the guys at Bohemian Grove, at the Koch seminars, the Hoover institute genre think tanks...all the people who need the Middle Class quiet, obedient and complacent.

How Much Do You Care?

2011-12-09T18:55:00.001-08:00

On Dec 8, The Ninth Circuit Court of Appleals, Northern California Division heard arguments about the release of video documentation of the challenge to the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 in then-Chief Judge Vaughn Walker's court. Kate Kendall, Exec. Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights reported on the proceedings for Advocate.com. Her account is stirring and evokes the spectrum of emotions anybody whose life has been changed by even the threat of denial of basic human rights has every justification to feel.

In the comments section, a Christian complained that people of faith are all lumped together as haters for being a part of one among the cast of organizations that all parties agree are largely behind the whole anti-equality affiar.

Bonnie MacKenzie · Owner at Cen Cal Solutions

Why is it that Christians are called haters when they don't agree with something? I don't hate anyone. I have my beliefs concerning issues going on in the World, Country, State, County, Town, but if I express those beliefs there is a good possibility that many are going to say I am a hater, or worse a racist, which I am neither. I am just as entitled to my beliefs as everyone else. Yes, Christian's have rights too!

I'm of the opinion that it's a forest-for-the-trees situation. Almost anybody in the midst of antisocial behavior will opine of onesself an exculpatory detail that exhonorates them of culpability. Bullies don't see themselves as bullies. Theives have a reason why they must do as they do. If only at the moment of truth, even murderers are convinced they are doing what is left of them without choice. Haters don't think they hate. Haters are convinced their gaud commands them to act, righteously so, in ways that those who don't understand might misconstrue as hateful.

So, I offered her a test to see if she is worthy of a get out of jail free pass.

Nathan Garcia · Top Commenter · Big Fish in a Little Pond at Writer, Broadcaster, Entreprenuer

For anybody who truly cares if what they profess is actually true, Christians who condemn homosexuals as immoral on any level just for being gay would do well to examine for verity the fact that the two most often used verses in Leviticus to villify gays don't mention or even hint at homosexuality in the Talmud, the original Hebrew texts from which the Old Testement derives. The verse in Leviticus 18 actually refers to the use of Temple prostitutes, either male or female, which were quite common then. It was also a social misstep, a faux pas, not even close to an abomination. And, the capital punishment ascribed in translations doesn't even appear in the original.

The verse in Leviticus 20 refers to the common practice of spouses sleeping separately in different beds, and when possible not even in the same room. The only time a husband would occupy his wive's bed(s) would specifically be meant for procreative congress. The prohibition is the use of a woman's bed for any other use, whether it was sex with somebody else (including an alternative wife), or another man, or any other reason, just wasn't done. It, too, was frowned upon. An abomination? No, not in the Talmud. Frowned upon, not punished by stoning at the city gate.

My point is that every Christian who condemns the morality of homosexuality based on either passage in Leviticus is led astray, and every repeated utterance of condemnation of LGBTs is a repeated bearing of false witness, whether willingly or because they've swallowed, albeit in good faith, the traditional lie passed from generation to generation since King James II instructed his bevy of religious and language scholars to inject the Anglican attitude into their labors.

So, tell me, just how serious are you about being without a doubt that which you affirm is actually true? Will you give it an honest appraisal, check it out, prove conclusively through your own indepenant research whether what I've presented is indeniably, unequivocally true or false. If you fail to honestly, comprehensively and completely follow this up, then you are a hater. If you seek and answer to the end, then you are righteous and fully justified in denying you're one among the haters.

Whom among the righteous would move to prove me wrong? Of course, those who wouldn't could always claim they refuse out of faith, the universal catch all justification for doing evil. They can always claim that giving my suggestion the time of day would equate commission of the worst, the single unforgivable sin.

How convenient.

Obama, The Economy, History & Election 2012

2011-11-28T10:48:00.001-08:00

Here's the online story from my hometown broadsheet, the San Francisco Chronicle.

Democrats grab momentum on volatile GOP contest which describes the the state of the GOP nominee field and how it stacks up with the incumbent with the inclusion of economic and foreign policy factors. A lively discussion in the comments section ensued, including the following:

mwrg 9:06 AM on November 28, 2011
[...]
Do you honestly see this President being re-elected with these kinds of unemployment and consumer confidence numbers? Seriously?

Do you think the economy is going to magically get better over the next year under this guy? It may be above your pay scale to pay attention to what's happening in Europe right now, for instance?

He's finished, and even most Democrats know it. The country is ready to cut its losses. If you haven't noticed the Conservative wave of the last 3 years, you're willfully blind. But then we knew that, didn't we?

And...

mwrg 9:02 AM on November 28, 2011

Wow, color me shocked that a Chron "political writer" just wrote another piece slanted against Republicans and for Democrats.

Apparently she doesn't read her history however. The economic and political dynamics of this country are so akin right now to 1979, it's uncanny. Economics works in cycles, and politics follow. Carter 2.0 is in the White House right now. Remember what happened next?

About which, in response, I wrote:

Oh, my freaking gaud, look how gobsmacked I am that yet another perennially malcontent, cafeteria-style pseudorealist conservative grabs at minor circumstances that service his wishful narrative while ignoring the big picture that blows his playbook out of the water.

The early 1930s are more similar to the current crisis than 1979, where it took from October 1929 'til November 1932 to vote out enough of the anti-working class, pro-Wall Street/corporation Republican obstructionists in favor of FDR. That was three years and three weeks, which is just about exactly how long its been, now, since the investment bankers took their failed banks to be saved on the backs of American tax payers. FDR and new Democratic majorities, over time, ushered in real economic stimulus like the Work Projects Administration (very much like Obama's American Jobs Act) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (aka Roosevelt's Forest Army, the New Deal, twenty years of Democratic adminsitrations and forty years of Republican near irrelevance and unprecedented American prosperity. The almost universal Republican overreach in continued policies favoring corporations over the vast majority of working class, lower class voting American has awakened the current electorate's recognition and acknowldegement of the vivid destructiveness of the neo-conservative/religious right movement of the past thirty years.

In the 30s, Europe had been in economic ruin for over ten years similarly to Iceland ,Greece, Spain, Portugal & Ireland's current state, somewhat presaging what world class economists predict is an inevital replay of the financial catastrophe of eighty years ago that gave rise to political envirnonments that brought the world Mussolini, Franco, Nazi, and Bolsheviks fifteen years before that. Now, we have the Arab Spring and possible Arab League prominence in Egypt, The American Autumn.

The current circumstances bear a mere shallow comparison to 1979 which made Reaganomics and neo-con policies possible, & a whole lot greater resemblence to fifty years prior. That time brought us the New Deal, World War II, and paved the way for the rise of the Middle Class, The Great Society and major civil rights legislation which, in turn, enabled the way for bigoted Democrats' defections to the Republican party, the rise of the Religious Right and corporate cooptions of regressive groups and emergence of Reagan, et. al.'s Objectivist policies now utterly exposed for the hoax and fraud they are.

Magic vs Elbow Grease

2011-11-27T00:11:00.001-08:00

It started with a post on Facebook referencing a story about complaints that the President's Thanksgiving radio message didn't mention a magical deity.

Obama Thanksgiving Speech Didn't Mention God

www.aol.com

President Obama drew heat from critics for who he didn't thank during his Thanksgiving speech. The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that the Presidient didn't mention God in his address and that's not sitting well with some conservative pundits, ~~as seen in the video above~~.

To which I responded:
Nathan Garcia I dunno, but you gotta hand it to a guy who finds equal worth, under intense pressure to the contrary, in freedom FROM religion. I'm pretty damned thankful for that.

The deterioration of the thread lead to this:

M****** E L**** S*.[...] Remember, Jesus said the things HE could do, his followers could do, and greater. He was spiritually developed to the point of being able to control the weather, walk on water, and rasie the dead to life. What the people are being fed as Chrisitanity is OBVIOUSLY not the true teachings of Christ, since not one person has raised anyone fron death back to life so far. Ressurecting the dead, by the way, did not originate with the advent of Jesus into the world. Several of the prophets of Israel were recorde as having deone so. Therefore I must cocnclude there is some spritual methoddology, missing in the teachings we currently have available to us. Jesus indicated we are to primarily seek the Kingdom of God within ourselves, and NOT from the sky. Therefore as long as we continue to concieve as God as some being outside ourselves, we are looking in the wrong direction. Naturally your prayers weren't answered, you were sending them in the wrong direction. But you must acknowlege there was some kind of spiritual connection…however weak and misdirected, that was actualized in the fact that you survived.

Nathan Garcia It is recorded that I have raised the dead by the simple fact that I just wrote it down. It means nothing. The deity within ourselves is what we make of it; there is no supernatural anything going for us. Assertions that it's within and we just don't have control of the magic is wishful thinking. Hocus pocus. Superstition. Old wives' tales. It takes a special kind of antisocial pathology to deny our intrinsic, psychological interdependence on each other. We are social animals, and are genetically and psychologically bound to help each other in order to help ourselves overall. Rejection of that fact undermines the fabric of a functional society. Sociopaths such as Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy, followed by Alan Greenspan, Ronald Reagan both Georges Bush, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia and the entire neo-con, right wing, religious/Tea Party/Republican collective are exactly what brought our planet and our country to the sad state we're in. It's all based on discredited, reality disproven magical thinking, hocus pocus, wishful assertions that claim we just don't believe the lies stongly enough and that's why they don't work. In reality, religion, unregulated free markets and the rest of Reaganomics/trickle down economics don't work because they're false, antisocial and intrinsically self destructive.

J*** J***** ‎@Nathan. " Unregulated free markets." Is that a new, left wing, oxymoron, talking point or what? LMFAO!

And, immediately:

J*** J***** Two words you'll never hear from the left are, personal responsibility. It's there belief that only a nanny state, federal government, can take care of you because you're to stupid to do it yourself. Now, don't you feel insulted?

I know, I know. But, I just couldn't let it go.

Nathan Garcia @J*** J*****: Nearly unregulated free markets are what let investment banks take investor money to gamble away, destroying by as yet uncompensated fraud countless mutual funds and individual retirement savings accounts. Millions of seniors are suddenly without the retirement they saved all their lives to provide themselves (aka personal responsiblity), some of them slipping into poverty so severe they must choose between eating and rent, paying for medical care or paying for heating oil. The term is not a buzz word, left wing talking point or anything close to an oxymoron. Unregulated free markets are exactly the goal corporate oligarchs wish to achieve, and have been very nearly successful in getting for themselves since the 1980s neo-con grip on policy. The Glass-Steagal Act, enacted in June, 1933, specifically to avoid the large banking practices that led to both the Great Depression in 1929 and the current too-big-to-fail bank failures and bailouts. Credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and the other fraudulent financial instruments that sank Bear Stearns, Leman Bros, Citibank, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual to name but a few could not have happened without rampant deregulation at the hands of Reaganomics, neo-con policies. Good gaud, man, pay attention!

Personal responsibility extends beyond an individual's well being into supporting the very society from which one derives benefit. Denigrating and dismissing one's social responsibilities is antisocial. The extent to which the right has abdicated responsibility for society at large in their quest of abject selfishness is pathological. Ask any qualifed psychology professional about the parallels of what is termed corporate feduciary responsibility and sociopathic behavior and you'll get an accurate, one-to-one correlation. It is willful ignorance to deny the fact that, as a society, everybody shares a responsibility to the extent of one's ability to contribute, especially in proportion to the benefit one derives from that society, to uphold the welfare of each and every individual in that society. For instance, corporations that benefit from publicly educated workers are responsible for contributing forward into the next generation of worker's educations. Corporate taxes to pay for schools, colleges and trade schools is the appropiately right and responsible thing to do. There are, indeed, degrees of responsibility dependant on the benefit a person or organization recieves from that society. Gouging the public without compensation is destructive, perverse and doomed to failure. History has unequivocally proved that time and again. Randian Objectivist selfishness is proven false in practice and is a thoroughly failed ideology. In other words, Reaganomics is a very well orchestrated hoax that got the entire world economy in the fine mess we're in.

What psychological needs are filled for the likes of John Jensen in undermining even his own wellbeing in service of sick, universally destructive ideas that have been completely proven false? What drives one to ignore the proof of reality staring him or her in the face? You may claim whatever your convictions are, but there's nothing in your freedom of speech that obliges others to enable your delusions or behave as if you even have a point. You may continue ignoring reality, but don't expect the resto of society to agree, much less follow you in cutting your own throat.

Later on in the thread, I recieved some compliments on the last post and I suggested I'd repeated these points enough that the thoughts should at least, by now, be conherent, and I should perhaps post the thoughts to my blog and just link to it in future. So, here it is.

Then, these came across

J*** J***** ‎@Nathan " The government dosen't solve problems, it subsidizes them." Ronald Reagan

J*** J***** ‎" You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build charactor and courage by taking away a men's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves." Abraham Lincoln

Nathan Garcia J*** J*****: Oh, yeah, the guy who ran on balancing the budget and improving Social Security, but spent so much on military boondoggles he raided the Social Security fund to cover his tracks and then claimed Social Security was a financial failure. Quoting the President that started the raid on the middle class as some kind of metric for virtue is the same kind of appeal-to-authority logical fallacy as quoting a book of ancient myths about a despotic, pernitiously cruel deity as a model of kindness and mercy. It's absurd and willfully ignorant in the face of proof to the contrary. That's hold-in-your-hand, unequivocal, indisputable proof, and not just contrary opinion, hyperbole or bloviation.

Applying the Lincoln quote to critique redress of the vast inequities of Reaganomics and the neo-con policies of the past thirty years is nothing more than an absurd list of false equivalencies. It's odd, don't you thnk, how the country prospered when the progressive tax rate was up to 70% above $2 million and 90% above $10M -- you know, during those idyllic 50s of unprecedented prosperity Republicans and right wing ideologues keep wanting us to return to socially but not fiscally -- and the country has faltered into despair since Reagan gratuitously declared governement as the problem as an excuse to dismantle public policy safeguards to the benefit of corporate interests. No one is suggesting, nor has there been any time in American history, a destruction of the rich to aid the poor. The proposed three percent raises in taxes, or even a return to the 35% top tier would ruin nobody. Claiming it would is fantasy, disingenuous, outright fallacy. Nobody is suggesting indescriminate waste, and every person in Congress agrees waste must be eliminated. It's just that the New Deal and the Great Society programs are not waste and even strengthen the country. And, any study not paid for by the Hoover Institute, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise institute or the Chamber of Commerce -- that is, independant without a preordained agenda -- bears that out. Are you really suggesting the wage payer will be crippled by hoarding only a few percent less among their billions or even millions, or better yet, paying the same percentage of all their income as the salaried and minimum wage earner? It is the upper class, led by Richard Nixon (Southern Strategy) Ronald Reagan (Trickle down economics) GHW Bush (Wllie Horton), the Republican Party and billionaire funded, propagandaizing think tanks that have engaged in class warfare, and then hypocritically use the term on their economic victims when those so effected call them on it. No where and at no time have social programs removed individuals' initiative and independence as proven countless times by the millions of American of all ethnicities, races and creeds who have pulled themselves out of poverty, each to his own abilities, after recovery from rough times. The whole point of the social safety net is to provide help for those who are physically, mentally, emotionall unable to help themselves.

The brush with which you paint is as wide as it is false. Not one single one of your points is applicable to the real world. Every comparison you make is itself an indictment of your own brand of class warefare, attempts at underemining the dignity of those whom you label as other than yourself. History has already proven your positions false, unworkable and unsustainable. The vast majority of the population, worldwide and domestic, are on to the distortions, mischaracterizations, fallacies, magical thinking absurdity that are instrinsic to right wing propaganda which right wing despots and ideologues have been spouting so effectively these recent thirty years. Empty, corrupt, unsustainable, self-destructive. Say as you wish in whatever terms you care to use. Just understand you are exposed as one who substitutes conviction for reality, assertions for fact, and opinion for truth.

My Letter to President Obama, 26 November 2011

2011-11-25T18:11:00.001-08:00

Dear Mr. President:

What's going on here? Brutal police crackdowns on OWS protesters simultaneously across the land, an 18 mayor conference call with DHS, suppression of press coverage, intimidation abridging Speech, Assembly, Due Process, Equal Protection, Redress of Grievances rights. These police forces answer to you. Are you part of this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy

Immigration Troubles

2011-11-13T01:48:00.001-08:00

Immigration policy today is arbitrary, cold and perniciously cruel, never mind antithetical to original American character. What about the push to Christianize the country also created the we-versus-they need to turn our collective back on decency, humility and humane inclusion. Not charity, just plain equality. extending to everybody a strictly fair chance to achieve everything you take for granted? Immigrants overwhelmingly overcome cold hearted obstacles to normalize their being here to work and pay taxes for which they never, ever, receive any benefits. Yet, hateful people keep making up excuses to hate them, exclude them, make them different or somehow undeserving. Such ugliness is at the root of all the problems, financial, social, cultural and everything else. Being brought up in a predominantly religious environment makes people think they have some magical entitlement and that everything will somehow be magically okay if they are pure of heart, and then make up all kinds of crap to realign the world to reflect a magical purity of heart. Noble it is not. Immature and dysfunctional from the get go.

There are literally none among us who do not have ancestors who arrived among us without asking permission first. Nobody should have to. Everybody must be given a fair and even chance that made it possible for each and every citizen to be here now.

Increases In The National Debt

2011-11-07T10:57:00.000-08:00

This was posted

with the following comments, to which I responded...

P**** B*** The facts poke holes in all the Republican arguments. Republican policies created most of the debt. Republican policies gave us wars that are eating us alive. Republican deregulation gave us the financial crisis. The stock market and economy perform many times better under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents. Pick that stat, the facts show Republicans have all these issues wrong.

J*** S***** M******* Still does not absolve the Dems as they were just as responsible for the Debt in Repub times...bot parties drank the Kool-Aid and can-kicked this to the next gen. Both have to solve now the medium/long-term trend and meet in the middle to synch the fiscal disconnects. Tsunami approaches...Times up!

David S**** M****** As a conservative republican, can I please say let's all stop the name calling? The problem with this nation is not democrat or republican, it's the fact that for the last 40 years the people on the left have been moving to the extreme left and the people on the right have been moving to the extreme right. How can we ever solve the problems we face when we are so greatly divided? We need to meet in the middle and work together. There will always be issues that we are greatly divided on, but we're letting those issues cause a stalemate on all the others. All the nasty comments you've made about conservatives does not help. All the nasty comments conservatives have made about ya'll do not help. If we don't have each other's back then we will never survive. Yes, we should debate the issues and present our cases, but let us not get bitter and close ourselves off to one another, instead let us HEAR each other and UNDERSTAND each other and find some common ground. Is that really too much to ask? After all, it is our children who will have to suffer/benefit from the decisions we make, not us.

David S**** M****** granted I am reconsidering the whole conservative republican thing. i'm too conservative for the liberals and too liberal for the conservatives. I'm a Christian first and foremost. God gave me this life and it is a precious gift. He gave me forgivness, for which I could never be worthy. He gave me this planet for which he instructed me to take care of it. I believe we should recycle and if we can find clean, renewable energy then let us use it and make it affordable. Let us clean up pollution. I do not support abortion unless the mother's life is in imminent danger. I do not support wealth redistribution, I believe in working for your wages, though I do believe in fair wages for fair labor, not union wages and not sweatshop wages. Where does this put me? I'm sure neither liberals or conservatives want to claim me, but that suits me just fine. I just try to stand up for what is right and what I believe in.

Phil N****** If your entire political standpoint is based on statements like "I'm Christian, God is good, etc, etc", I've got some news for you: God isn't paying our bills. If you REALLY and TRULY want religion to be part of our government, then let's start taxing the churches. Then I would have less of a problem with religious politics. However, and thankfully, there is SUPPOSED to be a separation of church and State.

David S**** M****** phil, that is not my entire political stance, though my faith certainly does drive many of my beliefs. The church does have a place in govt because many of us are religious, however, we do need a degree of seperation to ensure we don't have a situation like England had with the Church of England having the political control or even Islamic Caliphate like in some Middle East countries. I'm mindful that we're not all religious and that indeed everyone needs to be taken into account in our laws. I was just trying to be honest about where I'm coming from in my statements I make on here.

D****** M**P****** Faith has NO place in government. Unless it is MY faith. It is hard to pick WHOSE faith we are going to use.

W**** A*******-S****** David, unfortunately some of the christian faith have highjacked our government with greed and inequality on the agenda but with god on their lips. There have been many high profile "christians" over the years who have vowed openly to turn the US "back" into a xian nation and that should be cause for great alarm. It's wonderful that you have strong beliefs but please speak with your brothers and sisters who are intent on making America a theocracy and let them know government was kept apart from religion for very good reasons.

Nathan Garcia I cannot bring myself to trust the judgement and ability to discern among those who believe in magic or that supernatural means are appropriate for problem solving. The entire premise is wishful thinking and patently absurd. Republicans rely on people who can't tell the difference between conviction and fact and who substitute opinion for reality. Religion is not reality and basing ones life decisions on such superstition is doomed to fail. Nothing in anybody's freedom of religion compells me to behave as if I believe as they do. Nothing in religious tolerance compells me to enable religious delusion. The entire Republican set of policies is false, counter-reality and tries to undo the inevitable: organisms and society evolve toward survival. Republican traditions, ideals and "values" are archaic, anachronistic and have consistently failed to help the whole society succeed. Pick any era, pick any group, and it's all the same: conservatism is regressive, harmful and self destructive. You may not require me to contribute to or infect me with your destruction.

Nathan Garcia What name calling? Describing observable, documented and empirically verifyable events is not name calling or pejorative in any sense. Such mischaracterization is exactly what causes the kind of cognitive dissonance that muddies the waters of discourse so thoroughly that intelligible, honest exchanges are impossible. While the right have been climbing over themselves to become more extreme, the left has moved in the same direction though not as outrageously far. Anything contrary to extreme regressive narratives are falsely labelled extreme when they are merely reality based. The right goes so far as to disparge basing observations on reality as if it were questionable, a bad thing. That is the nature of conservative absurdity. Make up whatever manipulation you choose, and every disagreement is evil, insulting, disparging, intolerant. I'm so sick and tired of these tedious false equivalencies. Example: ID is not science and does not deserve equal time in a scientific forum. Another example: A 48 hour old human fetal blastocyst is not a human being, does not possess any of the faculties that constitute a viable human being, including the mythical soul. Third example: self awareness is not that mythical soul, and a fetus isn't self aware. Hell, infants aren't even self aware for the first year and more of their life.

All these delusions, logical fallacies and failures of the recognition of reality are connected, feed on each other, and contribute to the overall dysfunction of families, communities, society at large, the private sector and government. If you can't find hold-in-your-hand proof behind an idea, it just doesn't work in the real world. Reality is that stuff which, when you stop believing in it, refuses to go away. How much of religion and conservative dogma would exist were it no longer pushed as if real? Pert' near none, I reckon.

The State of Things

2011-10-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

I often get a bit of inspiration while responding to some bit of rigamarole, falderol, shenanigans or tomfoolery on any among a number of news or opinion sites in the gol' durned eternally beloved interwebs. Sometimes, my responses are concise enough to stand on their own without extraction contexts or any other lead-in explaination. Here's one:

Thirty years of Reagan policies, subsequently amplified by Bush/Clinton/Bush to the current cocophany of nonsense, are exactly the problem and must be reversed.

1)Regulation protecting the population and the economy from financial fraud would break up, as it used to be before Reganomics and rampant deregulation toward the current near nehilistic, "wild west" free market, the too-big-to-fail investment banks from insurance carriers and charter banks (Glass-Stiegle Act).
2) Campaign finance reform that would at least make contributions tracable or, better yet, all campaign contributions placed into an independent super fund from which all candidates and issues organizations (SuperPACs) receive funds equally according to contest and constituency, and inclusion of lobbyist spending, pointed at any legislator with rights of refusal to entertain their entreaties, as campaign contributions, again reflecting complete transparency and mandatory public disclosure from a single, one stop resource.
3) National infrastructure maintenance, abandoned beginning with Nixon, put into overdrive by Reagan and ignored by Bush/Clinton/Bush to upgrade the country's backbone of public safety, create jobs and stimulate the economy in a permanent manner,
4) Universal healthcare option, coinciding with private insurance plans (for whomever believes paying more for less is a good idea), to eliminate the currently locked in private insurance inefficiencies/greed/run away costs/bureaucratic "death panel" control over therapy qualification and delivery.
5) Tiered tax system where those better able to pay for the nation's physical (infrastructure) and philosophical (that which creates and sustains actual American exceptionalism) upkeep contribute a reasonable, proportional share to sustain the systems, the advantages upon which the rich and better off were able to build their wealth, (safe roads, safe air travel, safe communities, safe air and water, universal education) that everybody, including future generations, depend on.
6) Reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine to fairly balance the unrestricted, irresponsible radical right rhetoric that passes for news in some quarters without answering to anybody or anything over blatant lies, distortion and information fraud upon the public.

These actions would remedy and, in time, reverse the effects of the last forty years of regressive, "conservative" class warfare at the expense of the middle (and impoverished) class(es).

2011-10-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

Melissa Harris-Perry writes (http://www.thenation.com/article/163544/black-president-double-standard-why-white-liberals-are-abandoning-obama#comments) that Obama is losing white liberal support more quickly, in spite of rather positively comparable records and circumstances, more quickly that did President Clinton because of vestigial, latent racism. The umbarge in response was striking. Methinks she doth protest too much. Besides:

Ms. Harris-Parry's analysis hits and misses the mark to varying degrees according to the variations among the individuals who make up the electorate. Not everybody's the same, and not everybody is as cuplable within her harrative as the worst among us. But, it strikes home at least a little among all of us. Sure, I'm angry and resent the shortfalls between actual policy and what we'd been promised for our vote. Whom among the most vociferous above took the time and energy to relate their concerns, in a contemporaneous manner, to the President? Once, twice, or each and every time? Nothing short of at least a majority of the time, considering the contentious nature of governance these days, and the unremitting pressure from a relentlessly irrational opposition, excuses any of us of being part of the problem or for grousing after the fact. Without pressure that includes workable alternatives, it's no more than embittered crying in one's beer. Are the complainers on this page really saying they'll vote for the Republican alternative, or render punitive, passive agressive retribution, withhold their vote altogether, and allow Republicans any more power than they now enjoy by default? If what you see isn't good enough, do something CONSTRUCTIVE about it. Whigning doesn't count. Cutting your nose to spite your face is as ugly as you can get, and fits in perfectly with MH-P's premise here, whether you like it or not, whether you agree or not.

Write the President daily. Put his feet to the fire. Counter the pressure he's getting from all other quarters with pressure of your own. Election day was only the barest of beginnings. There's no room to complain if you fail do to your part.

My Letter to Nancy Pelosi re: Rep. Anthony Weiner

2011-06-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

As a San Francisco voter, Nancy Pelosi, California 8th Congressional District, is my representative and I have proudly voted for her every time I've had the opportunity. So, when I read even she was calling for Rep. Weiner's resignation, I just had to speak up. Here is the message I sent her, cc:Anthony Weiner.

Madam Leader:

Even suggesting Rep. Weiner step down is absurd. This story has legs only because the House Leadership hasn't stood up and LEAD the nation's understanding in the difference between fantasy and reality. Neither you nor any other leadership Democrat has defined for those assumed to be the great undiscerning public the difference between desire and action. Not one single person who has engaged in any manner of online networking flirtation is above Anthony Weiner. The bottom line is that he flirted and THAT's ALL she wrote. Pandering to your opposition's faux outrage unequivocally surrenders the power of your constituents to those who never received a single California vote. Take the power back, draw the lines in the sand with definitions and opportunities for understanding, and tell those small minded hypocrites to shut the hell up. The only reason Democrats so often get our heads handed to us is because we let small minded regressives define every issue against us. Stop putting up with that and call out their duplicity and small mindedness in no uncertain terms. It's the wishy-washy, politically correct attempts at diplomatically walking eggshells around issues that's so destructive. Give 'em hell. Call a spade a spade and a magical thinking delusion out for the dysfunction it is. Instead of speaking down to the public, require that they think enough to understand you. Raise the bar or it'll never get better. Never, EVER, get better.

From the early 90's through the year 2000, I was involved in and eventually hosted and owned an internationally syndicated talk radio program about computers and technology. At various stages, as I rose in the ranks of the broadcast production hierarchy, I was pressured to change the format and dumb down the content of the show. I steadfastly refused and never lost listeners and steadily built a following primarily because I didn't underestimate my audience's intelligence and drive to understand the show's technical content.

Our country's political survival is the same thing. But for the rabidly regressive, well heeled, corporate lacky, perennially uninformed or willfully obtuse minority, the vast majority of Americans want better than the third grade reading level pablum universally offered. You're never going to get the support of the uneducated, willfully ignorant regressive ideologue. Stop talking to them at all. Instead address those who are better than the ditto heads and falsely fair-and-balanced. Talk to the American public as if you were talking with your bright (formerly) adolescent children. Reason with them as you would smart relatives -- Americans, indeed, throughout our country ARE your relatives -- instead of as if to cognitively challenged pre-adolescents. You'll never beat the Boehners and Cantors, Becks, Palins, Bachmans and Bushes of the world if you don't. Just say no to ignorance. Never respond timidly to absurdities or magical thinking, unsubstantiated assertion or lies contrary to fact and reason. Call them out, chapter and verse, at every opportunity and never, ever, apologize for fact and reality.

Support Rep. Weiner's constitutents who would reelect him today by 54% majority. You owe all Americans, and especially New Yourk's 9th Congressional District at least that much.

With warmest regards,
Nathan Garcia

Same Old Endless Republican Loop

2011-05-25T16:18:00.000-07:00

Proof positive it's the same old hyperbole with the same old nefarious, unAmerican goal.

"The Republicans will try to make people believe that everything the Government has done for the country is socialism. They will go to the people and say: "Did you see that social security check you received the other day-you thought that was good for you, didn't you? That's just too bad! That's nothing in the world but socialism. Did you see that new flood control dam the Government is building over there for the protection of your property? Sorry-that's awful socialism! That new hospital that they are building is socialism. Price supports, more socialism for the farmers! Minimum wage laws? Socialism for labor! Socialism is bad for you, my friend. Everybody knows that. And here you are, with your new car, and your home, and better opportunities for the kids, and a television set-you are just surrounded by socialism! Now the Republicans say, 'That's a terrible thing, my friend, and the only way out of this sinkhole of socialism is to vote for the Republican ticket.'"
-Harry S Truman, 1947

I like the sentiment, but haven't been able to verify this quote's provenance. Can anybody help me out? Nathan@queers.com

Buttinsky Abuse of Freedoms Guaranteed

2010-11-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

Religious delusion is no excuse to attempt micromanagement of others' lives. The plain and simple fact is that reproduction is nobody's business but the actual people involved. It is not the place of government, neighbors, relatives, strangers, magical entities, pseudo-sacrosanct representatives of bronze age scriptural boogiemen or made up sky gods to dictate any facet of another's life.

There are more than one guarantee in the Constitution that safeguard an individual’s privacy and selfsame sovereignty regarding such issues. Roe v. Wade was decided on the right to privacy, and guarantees individual protection against government intrusion into the workings and control of one’s own body. Use of the referendum ballot, or voting in anti-freedom ideologues and empowering codependent officials who can stack the courts in favor of curtailing established rights is dangerous, un-American, and unpatriotic. It undermines the integrity of the Constitution that those who would curtail innocent, law abiding citizens’ rights rail so loudly and disingenuously to defend.

The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause dictates that there shall be no religion based laws conferring preference, under the law, for one religion over another. That is a two edged sword. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that this means that no religion or religious precept, however popular, is grounds to limit the behavior of any citizen or inhabitant under the jurisdiction of the United States Constitution. Limiting any citizen’s choices of procreation, family planning (specifically contraception and abortion), life partner, sexual orientation, as well as myriad other freedoms and liberties under the guise of religiously motivated morality are misguided and weaken the Constitution.

The Fourteenth Amendment also guarantees equal protection under the law. That means that no citizen can be treated differently than any other, which includes association, privacy, and the intimate life choices enjoyed (and taken for granted) by popular fiat and Constitutional protection by the majority of Americans may not be abridged. They may not be curtailed, truncated, or made conditional.

Anti-abortion laws and causes are un-Constitutional, un-American, and unpatriotic.

Anti-same sex marriage sentiments and activities are un-Constitutional, un-American, and unpatriotic.

Anti-undocumented worker activity are anti-Constitutional, un-American, and unpatriotic.

The rights bestowed upon one's religion end at the tip of one's own nose. Stop making stuff up to justify abuse of your freedoms and license to infringe others' rights. Get over it and butt out where your nose doesn't belong.

More Arizona Based Sedition

2010-05-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

McCain: 'Serious mistake' if car bombing suspect was Mirandized

The distinguished gentleman from Arizona, Senator John McCain, decorated war veteran, elder statesman of the United States Senator, perennial candidate for President of the United States, is categorically mistaken. Either Americans universally recognize and honor our country's traditional rule of law, or the very ‘war’ we're said to be fighting is for naught. We’re fighting first for America’s assumed right to push anybody in the world around to serve America's national interest, meaning the oil to drive industry, drive arms manufactory, and promote those at the top of the American capitalism paradigm: the so-called American dream. Everything else is a side issue, and everybody else are bystanders. These points are only possible because of the tenuous protective vaneer established by the very existence and application the United States Constitution. One cannot pick and choose which parts of it one will recognize and honor as the Religious Right does with it’s other sacred texts. Trying to merely undermines the whole document.

Think Richard Nixon and the Watergate coverup, Ronald Reagan/Bush 41 and the Iran/Contra bombs for cash to circumvent Congressional limitations spectacle, Bush 43 abuse of the Patriot Act, illegal wiretaps, selective intelligence secrecy for national security ruse, Claimed immunity from court orders both domestic and international, the Valerie Plame affair, each a Constitutional Crisis.

Even were this guy, Faisal Shahzad, not an American citizen who acted, incidentally, on American soil, he and everybody else who comes into contact with any facet of United States's lawful juristiction is both subject to and protected, as is everybody, again, who comes into contact with the U.S. A., by the Constitution of the United States. Denying equal access, equal protection, under the law is denying equal Justice under the law. Either we’re a nation ruled by law or we’re not. McCain’s suggestion is seditious, anti-constitutional political treachery. He is countermanding his own oath of office to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all threats, foreign and domestic. As a private citizen and a United States Senator, he avails himself of his Constitutional First Amendment right of Freedom of Speech. Were he still in uniform, he’d be subject to court martial. What McCain suggests is even more threatening and dangerous to America than a car bomb terrorist act that could have killed tens if not hundreds of people. McCain’s seditious threat to the integrity of the United States Constitution effects every man, woman, and child citizen as well as every visitor, immigrant, legal or illegal resident of our soverign land.

Undermining the Constitution

2010-05-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

It's pretty amazing how so many who support Arizona search and seizure AB 1070 law don’t understand (or outright ignore) its true ramifications on bona fide Americans as well as everybody else who is entitled to mind his own business without molestation. Yes, it's about civil rights afforded to anybody who sets foot on American soil, regardless of nationality.

My family has resided on what is now American soil since before there was an America, prior to either California, Arizona and Texas Sovereignty and even before there was Spanish Colonization. Every member of my family has prior, native born rights to roam among, reside within and enjoy all the protections of the United States Constitution provided to all among citizen, resident, visitor, immigrant and alien regardless of immigration status. I and my siblings all look like the so-called Mexican, more accurately named Mestizo, native American and European descendant blend. I, who have a longer standing claim to Constitutional protections than any ethnically unmixed peace officer, can be legally stopped, questioned and detained simply for looking as I do. Let's say I'm gardening in my own Arizona back yard and pop around to the garden center for weed killer or lawn seed, but forget to take along my passport, and decide to drive my vintage car, a lovingly restored and maintained 50s era Chevy Biscayne that still needs a paint job. I spend the night in jail because I fit a patently xenophobic (oh, the irony) profile mandated by descendants of European immagrants (oh, more irony). All because I didn't carry my papers with me as I went on a shopping errand. It quite literally could happen to anybody. Like anyone minding their own business driving through on I40 or I10 while some Highway Patrol officer who is a bit bored as he contemplates his stop quota in the hot sun.

Let’s take a look at historic precedents:
South Africa Aparteid era "pass laws" required all black and mixed race, “colored” residents to carry officially issued identification documentation which included name, birth date, fingerprints (biometric ID) and employment status. Arresting officers were given complete discretion regarding requirements to produce the documentation, even so far as imprisoning citizens immediately outside their residences because they were prevented by the arresting officer from recovering the needed documentation from their home mere steps away. These laws scapegoated black and non-white citizens, effectively isolating them from participation in broad social and economic aspects of society even though they often paid a higher percentage of wages in taxes than citizens not so subject to regulation.

In 1930s Germany, any person who could not prove they were not Jewish were required to carry identification documents which they had to produce anytime any police or public officer requested them. These laws isolated and marginalized Jews from social and economic participation in society.

Jim Crow: separate but equal facilities laws in the United States.

These are the exact tactics also used in Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, Socialist Russia, Talibanic Afghanistan, Islamic Iran, Baathist Iraq, and almost every totalitarian state without a Bill of Rights. And, now, as well and again, in an ostensibly democratic country wth the Original Bill of Rights. This is a measure purportedly implemented to control illegal aliens. But it also, immediately, effects natural born and naturalized citizens. Bystanders and witnesses to a stop can bring suit against officers’ lenience if they feel the officer hasn’t applied the law correctly. That is, they didn't cart away the guy who isn't one of us. It doesn't matter to all these entitled elite folks with misplaced anger because their packaging, the way they look and the opportunities citizenship has provided, alone, makes them safe. Do you think for a moment unscupulous lawmakers and fickle proposition voters won't extend the 'look like an illegal alien' motif won't be extended to include even lily white Aryan and Nordic types? When are sari and burkha clad women and turbaned men added to the list?

Indeed, this is a very slippery slope we’re dealing with. Already, Arizona’s legislature has handed Governor Jan Brewer a revamped education policy by which schools will lose state funding for offering courses that "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." Progressive analysts suggest that the target is the Tucson Unified School District’s popular Mexican-American studies department which the state Superintendant says is about “ethnic chauvinism.” The irony is astounding considering that, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Arizona Department of Education has decreed that teachers with “heavy” or “ungrammatical” (is that not a malapropism?) accents, like those English-as-a-second-language teachers recruited heavily from Latin America under Bush’s No Child Left Behind program for ten years, may no longer teach English. This follows a year 2000 ballot initiative that banned bi-lingual classes. Never mind that these hundreds of heavily accented, fully accredited teachers were hired specifically because they were bilingual.

This is the face of hysteria masquerading as sound public policy. AB 1070 is patently unconstitutional on unreasonable search and seisure grounds. Its intrinsic vagueness is overarching and likewise unconstitutional. It's mean spirited, misguided, as contemptible as it is contemptuous of the Bill of Rights. It was built to address troubles and problems that don’t exist.

Respondents to online reportage cite immigrant crime, public services freeloading, and other unverifiable justifications for these measures. The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit education organization which has collected and disseminated basic information about government finance since 1937, reports that growing numbers of undocumented immigrants, ineligible for Social Security Numbers, are using Individual Tax Identification Numbers to file their federal income taxes. They pay FICA, Medicare and other payroll taxes with every paycheck. USA Today reports that the “tax system collects its due, even from a class of workers with little likelihood of claiming a refund and no hope of drawing a Social Security check” and that “the latest figures available indicate it will amount to billions of dollars in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes this year (2008). One rough estimate puts the amount of Social Security taxes alone at around $9 billion per year.”

The fact of the matter is that illegal immigrants put in far and away more in taxes and fees than they now or will ever hope to receive under current federal immigration law. The border crime touted by anti-immigrant proponents is perpetrated by smugglers, drug cartels and other organized criminals. That’s a completely different issue and has nothing to do with the hard working, marginalized family breadwinners just trying to make a living. The jobs filled by illegal immigrants are not high profile, well paying positions preferred by more privileged, natural born Americans. They’re the unwanted, literally back breaking, dead end jobs that would go unfilled were illegals not there to do the essential yet menial support without which society's fabric would unravel. Elite citizens' very standard of living would collapse and, in extreme cases, disappear.

The effect of SB 1070 and education policy changes are already apprent. Main street usiness is down, universitys are losing high end students, tourism and the converence trade is losing billions per month in long range bookings.

Outspoken poponents to these measures would do well to study both the Constitution of which they so fervently claim defense, and the verifyable statistics on which jobs and taxes are being paid, while also comparing how many of those same dollars are paid out to these taxpayers as public goods and services.

At the same time, I personally invite all the trolls spewing nonsense and bile to keep it up. The louder you are, the clearer your true nature and corrupt positions become.

Word to the wise: Be very, very careful what you ask for.

The Real Threat to America

2010-04-12T08:17:00.000-07:00

Healthcare reform is now the law of the land. But, it almost didn’t happen because of special interest and right wing dirty tricks which are but the latest of a long litany of such underhanded dealings shovelled onto the playing field by forces doing ugly, immoral, unethical things to keep the American public frightened, uninformed and confused enough to actually work and vote against their better interests.

These dirty tricks are directly related, by virtue of being arranged and executed by the same or associated cadres of corporate and political operatives who would undermine the American public and even the American Constitution for personal, corporate and political gain. There is ample, credible, scholarly evidence accumulated over time but ignored by the mainstream press, due in part from pressure from the very big money interests who are perpetrating these anti-middle class acts and, incidentally, spend a lot in advertising which keeps the American press afloat. Even the good guys help undermine the political process, mostly for altruistic reasons. A case in point is Jimmy Carter’s cancellation of an investigation into Republican (read: Reagan presidential campaign) contact with Iran about holding off the release of the hostages until the very moment of Reagan’s inauguration. How about voter fraud and ballot tampering in Florida in 2000 (nd the USSC complicity)? What can be made of the corporate sponsored, so called grassroots protests against Healthcare Reform and their ridiculously inaccurate characterizations of the proposals and effects? What of the right wing media, especially the foreign owned Fox News, feigning innocence as they concertedly foment violence, sedition and revolution among the radical right fringe? They target the duly elected President (as opposed to the trickery that brought in their favourite son, Bush, in 2000), senators and congressmen, and everyday citizens who speak out, as if there were something wrong with our system if only because the welfare of the common citizen is being forwarded instead of that of corporate factions.

When is it too much to bear? When does it become unequivocally clear that these forces will not be stopped until they are exposed to the light of day? When is there enough evidence to convince the newsgathering powers-that-be that silence on these matters is undermining the spirit and the letter of the Constitution as painstakingly developed by the Founding Fathers?

Whom among the American Press and the United States Congress will take a stand to expose these REAL threats to liberty, justice, truth in politics, and quite literally, the American way? Please, editor(s), assemble all the exposed edges and reveal this scandal for the travesty that it is. Members of Congress, convene appropriate investigations in each committee appropriate to the committee’s purview. There’s plenty to go around and enough to occupy everyone. Why let them continue getting away with the very stuff ov which they claim their opposition is guilty?

If not now, when? If not US, who?

Filtering the Red Mist of Rage

2009-11-16T14:20:00.000-08:00

Social networking sites often present unscientifically executed polls among their users. A recent poll on Facebook asked, “Is it a good idea for a 9/11 terrorist to be tried in a CIVILIAN court in NY?” A friend of mine whom I’ve known since we were each in middle school, vehemently replied:

“Absolutely not!!! What kind of society have we become. [sic] They attacked us. It was not a civil act. It was an act of war. There are International laws for that. If a terrorist declares war on us by attacking our land and gets captured; [sic] they are prisoners of war and should be treated accordingly. It is not a matter for the ACLU or any other organization that deals with civil matters. We have become weak in the last 50 or so years. sure [sic] we have the weapons but, the social mind set has become to [sic] timid to do what is needed. Of course that does not mean that everyone is like that. I blame our elected officials, all of them, for where we are going. Many great societies have fallen because the leaders became weak and military resources spread too thin. National pride in this country still exists but, there is a cancer in the land. We have become so use [sic] to demanding our civil rights that we now want to extend them to our enemies. Too many people want war to be nice. It is WAR not a time of peace. Maybe if we were in the same situation our parents were during WWII where everything was rationed and we in this country would have to suffer because we are at war, people would wake up and see that our country is in danger of going into oblivion like so many before us. Treat a terrorist like an enemy from another country because, [sic] he is. He has NO American rights. I leave this question. How would Hitler, Romel, or any of the Nazi leaders be treated today if captured by us in war?”

It’s very distressing to see displays of deep misunderstanding on how the Constitution of the United States and its described rules of law work. A distracting difficulty is our recent history of government wilfully and impetuously ignoring rule of law in service of bravado and hubris which ended undermining the very goals those breaches of law were supposed to realize. It has been established and documented that these breaches of legal procedure and precedent not only violated the perpetrators’ oaths of office, but poisoned the use of any information gathered in these incidents from legal admissibility in trial court, whether military or civilian. Because of tainted evidence alone, there are ample reasons, specifically beyond the issue of jurisdiction, which make use of the Southern Division of New York Federal Court the best place to hold these initial trials. http://firedoglake.com/2009/11/13/some-alleged-911-plotters-to-be-tried-in-sdny-storehouse-of-evidence-untainted-by-torture/

That notwithstanding, jurisdiction still trumps all other arguments.

The United States is a land governed by the rule of law. Our Founding Fathers designed the Constitution based on fairness and egalitarian rule: All Men Are Created Equal, and equal protection under the law. Those tenets, with the various articles and amendments, are the law of the land. One need not be a citizen to be governed by these laws, whether law abiding, miscreant, criminal, seditious, or traitorous. Equal protection under the law applies to everybody, citizen or not, regardless of behaviour, who fall under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States.

No true patriot would undermine the Constitution of the United States. Recent official lapses in this ethic have damaged the United States internally, causing Constitutional Crises to a scale unprecedented in American History. These diversions from the hard and fast rule of law have also globally damaged our credibility and prestige. These perpetrators of sedition and traitorous treachery have yet to answer in court due to their former official positions. Perhaps they’ll never be made to answer for their behaviour. Failure to bring them to task undermines further the stature of America’s rule of law both internally and internationally and portends repetition at all of our peril. Most importantly, it remains for our nation to return to our roots and observe once again the ethics and mores prescribed by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution of the United States. Rule of law and egalitarian status for all inhabitants, citizen or not, is what makes our nation great.

The people who perpetrated the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center are criminals by any metric. It is established that they were supported and commanded by nongovernmental sources, even though those sources were established, in turn, by American tax dollars as well as aided and abetted by foreign governments. The fact remains they were neither then nor currently a part of any established government. As such, their attacks on American soil were acts of terrorism, but not, by any factual or applicable definition, acts of war. The organization which commands them is unable to declare war on America by any definition enumerated in the Constitution of the United States. Therefore, any justice administered upon the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks must be applied through the civilian justice system. It is immaterial that the United States Armed Forces have been brought to bear on Al Qaeda and their sobriquets abroad. The use of the military is appropriate as the entity provided for the common defence in the Constitution. The military keeps order internationally and defends American interests abroad. Internally, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the various regional, state, county, and municipal agencies keep order and defend sovereign interests internally, as proscribed in the Constitution. What remains is that the individuals world wide who are part of the many terrorist factions, working individually or in concert, remain civilian entities and are to be meted justice solely by the civilian Department of Justice. This is the law of the land as delineated by the Constitution of the United States.

Administration of justice toward these criminals by military courts martial is contrary to the law of the land and would further undermine the authority and sovereignty of the Constitution of the United States. No amount of emotional reaction, however justified (and I wholeheartedly agree strong outrage is appropriate toward these issues), changes the appropriate application of American rule of law. To act contrary to anything delineated by the Constitution is seditious (in that it undermines the authority of the Constitution), treasonous (as it acts against the integrity and defence of the Constitution), and is inherently un-American. No amount of emotional outrage changes these facts. To ignore this reasoning, to undermine the rule of law, is to undermine the Constitution upon which our nation draws its strength; It is to reduce us to the level of those who seek to destroy us, and they win.

I had Mrs. Graff for Civics in my junior year at Brownsville High School. That’s where I learned these principals first in a comprehensive manner. What I learned there has guided me in my political philosophy and decisions ever since. What guides you?

Righting Wrongs

2009-09-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

Courts in New Delhi recently struck down the enforcement of the 148-year old Section 377 regarding “Carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” Religious homophobes are organizing, some even going so far as to petition those same courts to reinstate enforcement of the Section. Others are calling for the need to discuss the issues in face of the resultant requirement by Parliament to reconsider the law in its entirety.

No, they don’t. They don’t have to consider anything. All they have to do is act. Repeal these hateful laws. Just do it. Quit whigning. Shut up and sit down.

Let’s look at the issues here. It’s about (1) the difference between religious dogma, which in all respects is the driving force behind both the law and vestigial social stigma against homosexuality, and civil regulation of the populace, and (2) public perception of the effect gays’ behaviour has on their lives.

My position regarding the need among religious persons to control the lives of those who haven’t succumbed to their way of thought is well established. In simple terms, those guys want me to toe the line of their inhibitions because, according to them, somebody said that somebody said that somebody said that somebody said…(back six thousand years of hearsay) that it’s said to be bad. Somehow, it just isn’t good enough justification to abdicate my freedom and liberty on their behalf, to justify and edify their chosen beliefs. Besides being intrinsically unfair, socially unjust and morally myopic, legislating religious dogma is just plain Un-American. Making any religious discipline the law of the land is no different from the Taliban enforcing Sharia Law in Afghanistan. Only the names are changed to shield the despotic.

Why is this such a big deal, then? It is said to offend the righteous. So what? Ask any psychology professional: nobody is responsible for your feelings but you. The concept of homosexuality hurts the acquired sensibilities of those who have been brainwashed into believing in devils and demons, fire and brimstone, heaven and hell. That’s just a pity, isn’t it? There is professional help to alleviate the problem. While one doesn’t choose to be brainwashed (subjugation of children to religion is child abuse in my book) one does choose what one believes or what one does about and with what one believes. Ask any mental health professional: gays are not responsible for the feelings of religious zealots. Or of any other homophobes of any stripe.

The fact is that discrimination is wrong. Limiting others’ lives because of their existence, because some aspect of their state-of-being makes another uncomfortable, is reprehensible as it is unconscionable. In many cases, most recently regarding LGBT, the zeitgeist is just awakening to the reality of it. For some reason, recognition of injustice in the moment doesn’t translate easily to recognition that whatever the issue has therefore ALWAYS been wrong, regardless of general public sentiment. Immediate resolution, if not restitution, is in order. Justice delayed is justice denied.

This claimed need to discuss these matters is at best a delaying tactic. Those stirred from not having to bother thinking about the uppity oppressed into acknowledgement, toleration, acceptance and integration merely seek to keep their feathers as unruffled as possible. Lighten the blow. Make the transition as painless as possible. Sod those fudgepackers, it’s still only about us. It’s a bother, but we can still carry on as if nobody exists but us. The tyranny of the masses, like the wheels of justice, moves slowly. Mustn’t upset one’s mother, or molest our saintly nan or rattle dear aunt Aiofe. Dad and uncle George mustn’t have to consider there might be poofs and fags near to them on the bus! The lads would never accept poofters at a footy match. The feelings of important, normal people are at stake!

But, what of the feelings of the millions of gay, Lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered, curious, questioning and sympathetic people who have withstood loss of livelihood, housing, family, friends, emotional support, civic security, literally life and limb; Endured public ostracism, censure and all the other slings and arrows of being different in a better-than-thou stratified society? What about the discomfort -- even unto death -- parsed to all those like myself? When is society going to offer me back the jobs I’ve lost (2), the housing of which I’ve been deprived (3), the personally received as well as general, public heckling from plain citizens (uncounted), elected officials (2) and uniformed police officers (1)?

And, they’re worried about the offense taken by people who suddenly have to acknowledge their poisonous attitude is wrong? Criminalization of an oppressed group for intrinsic, immutable characteristics of their state of being is cruel, inexcusable, immoral, unconscionable. There is no applicable justification for delay in righting such wrongs. The feelings and sensibilities of the general public be hanged. I’m just one among millions, and your discomfort at having to acknowledge you were wrong in attitude, and must adjust your behaviour toward me is NOTHING compared to even a single instance of injustice I have personally endured by institutionalized condemnation of what I am.

Make the changes, stop whigning. Just ‘effin’ grow up and get over it.

Repeal Section 377.

Letter to a new friend

2009-08-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes exchanges of ideas with new acquaintences inspire enough of a shift in the kind of everyday thought patterns one has to make one realize there's alot more going on in one's brain that it seems. Like they say, two heads *are* better than one.

I referred my blog to a new acquaintence, an Irish expat living in The Netherlands, I believe, who expressed the opinon that issues confronting America are best left to that continent. To which I replied (plus additional comments)

I've been in Ireland for almost eight years, and in that time there's been significant upheaval in the structure, adminsitration and oversight execution of the EU with much prognostication, wringing of hands, and gnashing of teeth over the unknown outcomes as issues arose and subsided. Each time my opinion was solicited, I referred to my American History studies of yore, applying what happened from the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation to the Constitutional Convention which resulted in the United States Constitution as a guide to how things would eventually pan out, regardless of the issue at hand. The parallels are striking and almost completely lock step the whole way.

I think that all the issues, to some degree or another, that are bouncing back and forth over there in America shall eventually rear their ugly heads over here in Europe, either in the context of the challenges to the Irish State as it wends its way through the current financial morass, or the EU at large, it's continued expansion, the civil rights issues hindering some states ascension to the Union, and the myriad cultural clashes among the sometimes-allies-somtimes enemies but perpetual rivals are bourne.

Considering, also, the HUGE effect immigration and the persistant Irish culture has had on the United States, there is a surprising amount of connection, most recently the American influence on the Irish economy which essentially enabled the Celtic Tiger and is unfortunately leading the current financial malaise. Like it or not: There is, therefore, most definitely something applicable. In lock step parallel.

The similarity of issues surrounding social dynamics are remarkable. Travelers are the Hibernic equivalent to Blacks and include a turmoil of tensions, albeit exclusively cultural rather than also physiological in nature . All the immigrants from newly admitted Eastern European states mirror issues around Mexican and Central/South American immigrants who are accused of robbing citizens' jobs and draining government social welfare resources. The difference being that people who had a short while ago been illegal were suddenly fully vested EU citizens with the same rights and privileges of any Irish Passport holder. But, then there are those Nigerians who perportedly only come here to have their babies and qualify for free housing, free mobile phones, free automobiles, free dole and enjoy an "in-your-face, I don't care, you can't touch me, I have mine you get yours, suckers" attitude. Same old ignorant hogwash. Only the names are changed to affect the innocent.

There's the effect of the Church on Same Sex Unions. Polls show over two thirds, a full 67%, of Irish citizens support Gay Marriage. That is, the full monty, the whole enchilada, the big lebowski, not some half-baked, let-them-eat-cake, separate is not equal, half-assed substitute. But, look at what we're getting instead: codified second class citizenship. And the government and national/corporate media spin is that the gay community is happy and grateful to get that much. Fifteen years ago you queers'd go jail, afterall. Don't make a fuss so we can pat ourselves on the back. We must protect the children!

Don't get me started. Except that's the conservative, merchant class elite dictating public perception in order to maintain the status quo. Oh, jeez, don't get me started.

Regional rivalry, large states v. small states, federalism v. centralized authority, the role and power of state courts, the role and power of appeals courts and courts of last resort, individual sovereignty, statute recognition across state borders, levying taxes, raising-arming-funding defense forces... The list seems endless.

I believe the rise of the European Union is a crucially important counterpoint to American imperialism, multi-arena world domination, especially its financial sector hegemony. The UK is being extremely silly holding out, not joining the Euro monetary standard, especially for such transparently egotisitical reasons. Eventually, they must acquiesce, and the longer they wait, the more humiliating it's going to be.

The older I get, the plainer the simple truth: Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. It really is like deja vu all over again, even if we're doing it again for the first time.

Chickens Coming Home to Roost

2009-08-21T09:30:00.001-07:00

The American Political Right Wing is NOT the friend of middle class America. Consistently luring the gullible conservative and moderate middle class into its boudoir with promises of safety only to find red herrings designed to distract from betrayal of even the most basic middle class needs and ideals, the very fabric of honesty, freedom and liberty continue to be undermined thoughtfully, systematically, wilfully. The Right has worked its magic of public manipulation with well practiced procedures, techniques and machinations established decades ago but made an art form in the first half of the last century, taking cues from a variety of sources.

Step one: Label the opposition as purveyors of exactly the behaviour in which you first wish to engage to immunize that behaviour from effective criticism. For instance, the Right touts itself as righteous, ordained for blessing, a cut above and uniquely virtuous while labelling those who criticize and in any manner dismiss their claims as elitist. The Right’s spokespeople, like Sarah Palin, admonish the other side to “quit makin’ stuff up,” and then claim Reform is all about undermining middle class, populist ideals, eliminating free choice, “Death Panels” and pulling the plug on Grandma. In blatant denial of reality, mind you.

Nicolo Machiavelli, in his seminal work, The Prince, posited whether it’s better to be feared or to be loved. Manufacturing gratuitous fear, according to the practices of the political Right, is obviously more effective.

Unable to compete on the merits of any argument, purely because every issue the Right supports is intrinsically corrupt, they ignore the issues outright and throw out misinformation and lies in order to obscure and obfuscate any discussion, undermining any chance of meaningful debate.* An prime example is the Republican Party’s refusal to offer any alternatives to the current Healthcare Reform debate. Healthcare Reform is intrinsically in the interest of the consuming public and counter to Health Industry corporate profits, especially for pharmaceuticals and the Health Insurance Industry, which stands to be eliminated as the superfluous, essentially parasitic middleman that it is. There is absolutely no constructive-to-the-voting-public alternative to Healthcare Reform.

All of this is designed to scare the public into supporting policies that are inherently contrary to the public’s-at-large best interest. It’s scaring legislators, too, with threats to their future office seeking viability: corporate campaign contributions. Everybody is saying that the Healthcare Reform issue is complicated and shall inevitably raise concerns and anxiety among everybody potentially involved.

Bullshit.

Absolute, unadulterated bullshit. The ubiquitous anti-reform stories describing negative effects on individuals’ health and security should this reform be enacting are generating the anxiety. They are manufactured inaccuracies, distortions and lies cut from whole cloth perpetrated to protect the profit margins enjoyed by health insurers, pharmaceutical vendors and other Health Industry purveyors who would rather do without competition that’ll drive prices, and their profits, down. Unequivocally, there is no excuse for a single Congressperson or Senator to oppose, in any manner or to any degree, a complete and comprehensive overhaul of how healthcare is paid for and how health care costs are regulated and how distribution of money to cover those costs is handled.

The way it is now, insurance companies control who gets paid how much and for which procedures, if at all. The insurance companies employ bureaucrats to determine, based on cost benefit analyses, what treatment may and may not be dispensed. This includes procedures and medication dispensing based on how said treatment, procedure or medication affects the insurance companies’ bottom lines. The insurance company clerical workers decide according to the insurer’s own rules that are formulated without their customers’ input. The insurance policy contracts, signed when customers are healthy and in no pain, often allow little or no recourse beyond arbitration, if that, once their bean counters deny benefits to the policy holder. The insurance companies make profit from this, charging a fee for providing the service of arbitrarily limiting what you get in exchange for premiums you pay and what your doctor is allowed to deliver. This is true regardless of how badly you need what your doctor orders.

There is ample documentation describing how each of the Conservative Right’s arguments against populist, progressive and (dare I say it?) liberal changes in society are false, dysfunctional and destructive to America as a nation, the American dream as a philosophy, and the American way of life as a state of being.

Why is Congressional support of Healthcare Reform not proportional to popular support for it from the general voting pool, much less the better informed (and coincidentally better educated) public? Perhaps the time of the Right inspired, anti-intellectual bent afflicting America since the Reagan era has run out. Finally, middle America is speaking out about how they’re fed up with anti-American ideas wrapped in patriotic clothing. Corporate demigods are finding it more and more difficult to pose as ordinary citizens as they rape the citizenry of rights and wealth.

It’s about time.

Oh, yeah. Does this sound vaguely familiar? Of whom does it remind you?
• National Socialists, aka Nazis, were Germany’s conservative, family values, God and Fatherland party in the 1930s.
• Combining organized violence and political extremism, Nazi supporting, party organized, so called grassroots activists shouted down and otherwise drowned out opposing viewpoints in public to silence alternative viewpoints.
• Intimidation by strength of numbers (mob rule), carrying weapons in public, especially political gatherings, was used to silence dissent.
• Intimidation of dissent by branding it unpatriotic, seditious, anti-country
• Universally ‘anybody but us is a threat’ White Supremacy racists.
• Repeat a lie often enough and it will be believed. –Josef Goebbels

Here’s some documentation on how the Right message delivery system has developed and why it does what it does the way it does and with such efficacy.

Who's behind the attacks on a health care overhaul?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/73765.html
Obama-Nazi Slur on ConsortiumNews.com
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/081609.html
Why the Right's Propaganda Works on ConsortiumNews.com
http://consortiumnews.com/2009/081809.html

All the bits slot in rather nicely, don’t they? For so long, we among the populace didn’t know. This kind of stuff only works in secrecy. We’re only just getting the details, and it’ll take a long time to undo the damage.

Nathan Garcia, 21 August 2009

*This vilification technique brings to mind the Monica Lewinski affair, in which President W. J. Clinton was actually impeached resultant of a blow job in the Oval Office. He didn’t think oral sex was having sex. Republican powers-that-be, namely Richard Mellon Sciafe, who also bankrolled through The Arkansas Project, failed gotcha investigations into Whitewater land deals and Vincent Foster suicide/murder/conspiracy fantasies, and Republican Senators financially beholden to Sciafe and his Right Wing cohort, were behind the effort. The Republican leadership equated their disagreement in the definition of a blow job to “High crimes and misdemeanours” as defined by the United States Constitution. Never mind the issues at hand were not related to his job, his job performance, and were only related to his popularity because the Right hated him so much. Kinda like they hate Obama just ‘cause he ain’t one of ‘us.’

Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, initially funded by Houston home builder, Bob J. Perry, who has also given millions to the Republican party and Republican candidates, mostly in Texas, including President Bush and former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose district was near Houston, were instrumental in neutralizing Presidential candidate Senator John Kerry’s exemplary Viet Nam war record, with VN War Veterans who claimed Kerry had lied to get commendations and medals, every claim which was contrary to eye witness accounts and official DOD records. Never mind that the Republican candidate was a draft dodger, used his father’s political connections to acquire a commission instead in the Texas Air National Guard, was cited for repeated Absence Without Leave, and again used political influence to avoid desertion charges, courts-martial and jail time. This was Conservative payback to Kerry who renounced his decorations and spoke out publicly in protest of that war.

The Right tried that again in the 2008 elections by claiming Obama is closeted Islam, was friendly and supportive of Weather Underground terrorists, and counselling community action organization ACORN to defrauded elections in Illinois. These incidents are the first time this kind of crap didn't stick.

It's about time.

The Power of the Boldly Disingenuous

2009-06-25T17:14:00.000-07:00

I get a lot of mail from People for the American Way, MoveOn.org and all those liberal mobilization organizations. I agree with each and every one of their positions I’ve been contacted about. The latest is about Diane Feinstien’s interview the other day on CNN with Jon King. She is giving legs to the weak willed Democrats who are feigning fiscal reservations regarding the Health Care Plans proposed by the Obama White House.

Let’s get real, people. There’s not a single logical reason to deny universal health care to every resident, and I mean not limited to citizens, but every single person who just happens to be on American Soil. The issue is loss of control by the Health Care Insurance Industry, and the concern expressed by Democrats is at the behest of lobbyists who are paid huge fees to keep elected officials aware of how much money the lobbyists’ masters have contributed to the elected officials over the years. That’s money that ensures the insurers tight control of the legislative process: Strictly In Favor of the Insurance Industry and Absolutely at the Expense of the Middle Class Population of the United States.

If anybody tells you differently, they’re lying.

So, I wrote a letter to dear, sweet Diane. And, it went something like this:

Dear Senator Feinstein:

I moved to San Francisco from Los Angeles in 1978. I was near the podium on the steps of City Hall when you spoke of fortitude in the face of death before the assembled crowd on the night of Nov 27 that year. I voted for you every election in which you’ve stood, and I continue to proudly stand as a constituent of your office as Senior Senator from California.

The Republican party is a deservedly truncated vestige of its former self. It has little or no real Congressional power. And, the members are spending all their energy obstructing progress to repair the damage done by their party’s policies these last twenty-eight years since the beginning of the Reagan White House. The health care corporate king makers are somewhat diminished in influence because of the financial crisis, though they're not as strictly affected as the banking sector. However, because of the concerted efforts of the Republican party to diminish and marginalize the middle class, it is imperative to take the current circumstances into consideration and act accordingly.

There is absolutely no reason, no justification, no excuse to undermine President Obama's health care plan. Whether it's true or not, declaring there is enough 'concern' by the Democratic caucus to prevent the reform bill from passing at its strongest on the side of the have-nots in America is giving aid and abetting the opposition that hasn't anything to offer but a return to the policies that has brought our nation almost to its knees financially, militarily and in terms of morale. Saying anything except the most bold support with no equivocation for the President's reform plan is unconscionable. Your acknowledgement of the naysayers' position gives it the very power to survive. If this bill is defeated or significantly weakened, it is directly resultant of attitudes like yours that acquiesce to those who would deny normal Americans their rights to life without sickness, liberty to choose how to pursue health, and the happiness a supportive government ensures.

Yes, the insurance companies donate alot to campaign funds, and yes, they have your ear. But, the votes they control are miniscule among the electorate that casts votes in California. It's the interests of the people of California that you're sworn to protect, and not the corporate heads and the paths their dollars take into campaign funds.

Once this is over, you'll still be the incumbent; you're still the front runner whether in a race to return to the Senate or a run for governor. Where the hell else dare they go? They'll necessarily be donating to your campaign as well. Especially true if you garner the support of the middle class by ensuring them this much needed, long overdue reform of American Health Care.

Talk up the plan's viability. Your stature in the Senate carries much too much weight for you to be seen in any way wavering from the fullest, most staunch support of President Obama's Health Care Reform Plan. Give him all you've got. It's the least you can do for those of us who have given you all we've got for so many years.

Regards, and wishes of the greatest health for you possilbe,
Nathan Garcia
San Francisco

Alright, so I don’t currently live in San Francisco, but I *do* vote by absentee ballot. So, I still count.

Power = Information Exchange^2

2009-06-23T06:38:00.000-07:00

Technology is changing everything. The Internet is all about information. Information is power. Despotic governments are having a hell of a time keeping a lid on free dissemination of information. China’s having the hardest time, requiring all new computers sold after July 31 to be configured with “filter” software that keeps out the bad stuff, and they don’t just mean pornography. In Iran, protests survive and threaten the government enough for government agencies to adopt strong arm tactics. But, the official government disinformation branding protesters as rioters, looters and violent criminals just doesn’t wash considering all the phone cam-captured evidence to the peaceful contrary. Well, peaceful and organized until the police and Revolutionary Guard get there, that is. Dozens of journalists have been ejected for publishing what the government describes as lies. But, YouTube doesn’t lie.

Twitter threads available for all to see describe moment to moment details of what’s happening on the streets. Twitter dispatched calls to rally have kept some protests one step ahead of the Guard and the authorities a bit clueless.

It's grassroots activism that'll make a difference in this kind of battle. It's my firm conviction that we're all in this together. I'm trying to monitor this stuff daily, but it helps to catch a glimpse of what catches other peoples' eye. So, thank you for any and all references to articles that catch your eye. Blog them. Twitter them. Keep the issues front and center in the consciousness of the people you care about. It is these loved ones who are affected by the political machinations of those who would deny you rights and fundamental services.

A long lost friend with whom I’d only recently, after almost thirty years, regained contact, cited on his Facebook wall a story about so-called centrist Democrats stonewalling the public option of healthcare reform in the Senate. I just don’t get it. Just whom are they working for? Of the two senators cited in the Op-Ed piece, one is obviously protecting his interest in healthcare insurance companies at the expense of his constituents. The other is just spouting disingenuous, obscure-and-obfuscate, reflexive reasoning gobbledygook hogwash.

So, I sent the two senators noted in the piece a message in support of the public option in the pending healthcare reform bill. Once again, technology rules! I Googled the senators’ names, picked the senatorname.senate.gov page, clicked on Contact, and sent them the email. Easy as pie. Somebody said it takes a hundred letters or email messages to counter one minute of face time between a Senator or Congressman and a lobbyist. So, send a message every chance you get, whether it’s to your own representatives or to elected officials in other jurisdictions. Every little bit helps.

Here's a copy of what I sent, tailored to correspond to the senators' home state.

Senator:
It is immaterial that I am a Californian and cannot vote in your state. I am still an American outraged at the obvious loyalty shown by any number of Senators for the corporations that line your campaign warchests over the constituents you're sworn to represent.

What the hell is wrong with you? Americans NEED the public insurance option. It's your SWORN duty to protect American Citizens and not the insurance companies. Sure, this competition will cut into insurance companies' bottom lines, but it won't threaten their viability as ongoing concerns a bit. Not one iota. Not a whit.

Sure, insurance companies contribute to your campaign, but the boards there only account for one or two dozen votes, if, indeed, they vote in North Dakota/Nebraska at all. Even when you vote FOR the public option in this healthcare reform movement, where the hell else are the health insurance companies going to go? You'll still be the incumbent. You're still going to run for reelection. And, by being on the vangard for protecting your constituents, you'll be on good ground to be reelected. Knowing this, the insurance companies will STILL contribute, as always, to your campaign.

Do your sworn duty, and serve the ethics for which you were elected to act. Support with all your faculties the public option in healthcare reform!

Regards,
Etc, etc, etc.

NYT The Lede Blog: A Young Woman's Fate Resonates
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/06/22/world/1194841118796/woman-s-death-a-symbol-of-iran-s-crisis.html?hp

YouTube: million person silent protest in iran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBQbDltPuCY

NYT Healthcare Showdown
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/opinion/22krugman.html

Tyranny of a Closed Loop

2009-06-09T04:43:00.000-07:00

Late last month, a conference promoting techniques for homosexuality cure was held in London by the Anglican Mainstream Organization with special focus on how religious professionals’ and relatives or friends of gays can respond biblically and pastorally to those struggling with unwanted so-called SSA, or Same Sex Attraction.

This stuff rends at my insides. I once lived the evangelical life. I was a born-again Christian. My week consisted of at least one church service and Sunday School on Sunday morning. Sunday evening included a bit of Choir practice, another service, and MYF, the youth group for a lighter hearted version of Sunday School. Wednesday evening gave up more choir practice. Any festivals involved more midweek worship. And summers involved Vacation Church School at least at the Methodist Church, and sometimes at the Spanish speaking Presbyterian church (maternal grandparents and family), the English speaking Presbyterian church (maternal side cousins), Lutheran and Episcopal churches. Once in a while there were things to do with my father’s side of the family at one among several Catholic parishes. And, there were occasional missions into Mexico to rebuild homes or churches, clothe people and generally make thing better.

I’m related to these people, and am well acquainted with many others. Well meaning people whom I’ve known my whole life. I tried my first twenty-two years to assimilate, to fit in and become one among the many. I tried to pray myself into a state of grace, to deny the hated self within.

I remember one day puzzling my mother with, “If I were somebody else who knew me, I wouldn’t like me.” She couldn’t understand why, and I couldn’t tell her it was because I had this black secret that I’m getting no help for, that nothing I’ve been told should work is making a difference. It was ruining me from being pure, from being whole, from being complete

Had I told her, had I been able to, she would surely have sprung into action and deepened the effects of the Stockholm syndrome of which I was already ensconced. I was a captive in a cult of archaic metrics of right and wrong, good and bad, pure and debased. My sin of being was compounded by my insidious silence. True to the doctrine of original sin, I was indelibly blemished beyond redemption. I could repent, but the offense of abomination would never disappear, never go away, never recede. I could never measure up. No amount of prayer washed away this sin of Same Sex Attraction. It was ruining me from being pure, whole, or complete. I truly believed I was at fault; somehow it was my doing that I had these feelings. All I had to do was figure out how to control them. Prayer. Girls. If I practiced enough, it didn’t seem like I was forcing it anymore.

Until the day I added up all the little inconsistencies, even before I began investigating the merits of these scriptures that had so dominated my life. The scales fell from my eyes. First there was the change in the church discipline, the official “this is what we believe” document that mysteriously (for a pre-pubescent) changed from one set of talking points to a discreet different set of beliefs one June Sunday at midnight. It was the merger with the Evangelical United Brethren formed the United Methodist Church.

Then, there was the church membership meeting which discussed the admission of a reformed prostitute into our congregation. One prominent member had objections toward protecting the innocence of his precious little Anna. That day I realized our holy, blessed communion under God had turned and our congregation, when he prevailed and the woman was barred admission to membership, became no more than a social club of which I was born into the lucky I’ve-got-mine crowd.

Then, I studied trigonometry, chemistry, biology and physics in high school. For the first time I was exposed to logic oriented thinking.

It wasn’t a sudden, psychotic-episode-on-the-road-to-Damascus that cleared my focus. Rather, it was a step-by-step process slowly building toward the pivotal, age old question: How could such an inconsistent, capricious, perniciously hateful set of stories and so-called guidelines capture, invert and stunt the imaginations of so many well meaning people? I could understand young children being taken in, but even I was able to think for myself after a while. And I came to significantly different conclusions.

And I think on the self esteem of these people who submit to Same Sex Attraction cleansing techniques. It rather reminds me of the story of Monctezuma, the Aztec king who peacfully greeted the invading Spanish Conquistadores. He’s seen their arrival in a dream and in that dream they were unstoppable. So, he surrendered to them, gave up all his people, his land and his riches without a fight. His acquiescence bought his murder and brought the Old World its first middle class. Within a few short years, the entire Aztec culture was wiped out, and hundreds of thousands of Aztec Indians dead from hard labor and disease. Thus was the cost of being saved.

Likewise, the Indians along the California coast, tamed and subdued by Junipero Serra who established the chain of twenty-one missions from Baja California to San Francisco. In his fourteen year crusade he counted just over 5,300, mostly Indian ‘neophyte,’ confirmations. Nobody has counted how many non-baptized, non-converted natives died under confinement and hard labor pending their seeing the light. Among the 5,000, how many were products of the Stockholm Syndrome?

How many faithful sufferers of unwanted Same Sex Attraction similarly turn to homosexuality cures because of the Stockholm syndrome? There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Reality v. Magic

2009-06-04T12:38:00.000-07:00

George Tiller’s death should not have come as a surprise for anybody who’s taken all the antecedents and provocations into account. He’d been shot before, years ago in both arms, by an anti-abortion protester during Operation Rescue’s Summer of Mercy in Wichita, KS. Operation Rescue has also been linked to Dr. Tiller’s recent prosecution and quick acquittal of abortion law violations. Fox Network’s Bill O’Reilly, among other conservative talking heads, has been relentless in branding Dr. Tiller as a baby killer comparable to a Nazi death camp doctor. The Twitter traffic expressing horror or supporting the killer reached up to one tweet per second in volume for hours following the news item’s first break, significant proportions of it hashtagged to “Top Conservatives on Twitter.” News stories following online releases of the story have been attached with a revealing divide of opinion, both in contempt of the incident and in support of the killer’s motives.

http://sf.carnalnation.com/content/7628/3/tweets-hate-crazy-right-twitters-about-murder-dr-tiller

This whole debate is absurd beyond belief. The truth of the matter is that the law of the land grants any woman the right to control her body, largely without restraing, and without having to answer to anybody for exercising this right. It's nobody else's business whatsoever.

Religious zealots strongly disagree with the existence of this law based on their religious viewpoint. Unfortunately for them, the law of the land also prohibits the government use of religious opinion strictly as the basis to change or in any way regulate the establishment or execution of civil law. As far as the law is concerned, specifically religious guidance of morality is contrary to the very essence of the constitutional guarantee of Freedom of Religion and its corollary guarantee of freedom from religion. The law of the land establishes religion as no more than just another opinion, among many, with no more weight than any other opinion. This is also the cornerstone of protection of the few from the tyranny of the masses. The founding fathers guaranteed the citizens and residents of the United States to be free from governance based on religious precepts because of their caprice, arbitrariness and the propensity of the religious to pick-and-choose their morality among a laundry list of archaic, paternalistic, dysfunctional, anachronistic traditions.

The long and the short of it is that abortion is legal and largely unrestricted in America by law. No one is forced to have an abortion who disagrees with its availability and protection under the law. Religious zealots who disagree are trying to circumvent the constitutionally guaranteed freedom FROM religion by codifying into law their various opinions on a woman's right to choose under the guise of morality. Killing a doctor because he practices services guaranteed to be available by the law of the land is murder. Anybody who supports, abets, encourages or otherwise enables even the smallest limitation to liberty, pursuit of happiness, and especially the life of people merely for engaging in protected freedoms is immoral, hypocritical, and Un-American. Forcing anybody to act according to a tenet held by a religion to which s/he does not ascribe is immoral, hypocritical and Un-American. To do so with lethal violence is absolutely no different from any other religious terrorism whether in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, Gaza, Spain, or England.

The Truth About Activist Judges

2009-05-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

I’m really amazed at how easily educated professionals in the media, many whose job description includes impartiality and accuracy, forget the very basic lessons from civics class regarding the Constitution, the branches of government and the separation of powers. As far as that goes, I have to include the professionals, as our elected representative in the House and Senate, most of whom possess Doctorates of Jurisprudence and are members of at least one Bar Association, who yet forget all the Constitution nuts-and-bolts details they studied to get their degrees, but conveniently forget in alignment with the common sense folksiness of the prevailing zeitgeist. Making readers and voters feel you’re as dumb as, or at least no smarter than, they sells. Newpapers or votes, doesn’t matter. As long as the public feels you’re one of them, whether it’s real or an act, they can trust you and you can get away with a lot. And, they do.

In his confirmation hearings, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, by all accounts the most conservative Constitutional literalist on the current court, described how his life experience informs and tempers his decisions. Even though his most telling quote is that the American Justice system isn’t about Justice, it’s about rendering a decision. Just the facts, ma’am. Yet, Justice Scalia professed inclusion of empathy. You’d have to look really closely, but the guy really does have a heart. I meant: REALLY closely. That’s okay, according to conservative ideology, because he’s the least likely among the Justices sitting the bench of the Court-of-Very-Last-Resort to grant any kind of right or privilege to groups or individuals not expressly delineated by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution of these here United States. The status quo shall be maintained. No sneaky new math, fluoridated water, implied rights to privacy or hanging chad surprises here. John Wayne, Chuck Heston, the Gipper and Pappa Bush can all rest easy.

But, then, an uppity, swarthy skinned woman of questionable Suma Cum Laude Ivy League credentials who claims heightened empathy for those who live in public housing, as she did, in an ethnic ghetto, as she did, and worked hard to transcend hardship, as she did, by saying essentially the same thing, however more elegantly, is a racist and an activist judge.

Unbelievable. These are well educated, professional prognosticators as well as members of the most elite professional societies in the land. But, as long as they act as ignorant of the minutiae of reality as the other ninety-eight percent of the population, they can get away with it. And, they do.

The difference between what Justice Scalia said and what Judge Sotomayor said is that one came from an Angry White Male putting forward his softest face, and the other came as a candid quote from a liberal minority jurist being spontaneous, open and honest. Oh! My! God! That can only be threatening to Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Nothing will ever be the same. Next thing we’ll have to grant all the protections of the Constitution to foreigners on American soil abroad. Activist judge!

Let’s make one thing completely clear: There Is No Such Thing As An Activist Judge.

It’s the mandate of the courts to interpret laws in the context of the supreme law of the land, whether in the jurisdiction of a state’s Constitution, or the federal Constitution. That is, does a law in question, or an issue pertaining in part to any law, abide by the protections of individuals, responsibilities of the general population and the myriad details set out by each jurisdiction’s codes of conduct and boundaries of rights. The court places each issue before it in the context of applicable constitutional constructs, and delineates how that issue measures up to those constructs. It’s called setting policy. It’s not making law, but interpreting scope and limiting departures from the limitations and protections described constitutionally. Setting those policies is the fundamental, crucial function of the courts. In other words, it’s the job of the courts to rein in deviant law established by the elected officials of an activist legislature, radical commission or department whose regulations carry the power of law.

The most basic limiting factor regarding how the courts are able to affect their work is regarding the content of what is brought before the bench. No judge can prop himself or herself up in the morning and start making pronouncements. A judge can’t ethically say anything about any legal issue out of the context of the courtroom and what is heard there, even on their own time. There has to be a complaint, presented in proper form in a forum of closely proscribed jurisdiction, in an adversarial context with two sides presenting arguments. The decision rendered is necessarily in the context of those arguments. It’s all very formal, the form and procedures hammered out for over two centuries of executing and refining those procedures.

One does not rise to the prominence of Supreme Court nominee by deviating from established traditional judicial procedures or rendering radical decisions out of context of the arguments presented in each and every case. Judges are mandated to contextualize law and how law effects individuals and society. It’s their job. It doesn’t make them activist, it makes them competent.

Anybody who tries to tell you differently has either ditched civics class or is lying.

©2009 Nathan Garcia All Rights Reserved

Oh, yeah...

2009-05-28T04:50:00.001-07:00

And, it's my mother's 82d birthday. Rest in Peace.

It's been a long road...

2009-05-28T03:34:00.000-07:00

I've been in Ireland for seven years, and it's been a long haul.

Ireland isn't the easiest place to live, I'll tell you. There are significant culture shock fault lines permeating the landscape. Some are glaring, in-your-face issues that you can see and smell from miles off. Others are very subtle and will catch you unawares.

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean nobody's out to get you. It's true. And, sometimes there are enough indications that indicate they're ganging up on you so that one would actually believe it!

On the other hand, I'm a firm believer in the influence and stanglehold bind chaos and entropy have on our everyday lives. If it (any it will do) can catch or bind or get stuck or impede or just get in the way, however seemingly unlikely, it will. It will. IT WILL (as in choose to just because it can!)

Go ahead! Prove me wrong!

Believe it or not, I'm a very positive person, always finding the silver lining. Good thing, huh? Things are always darkest before the dawn, and the sun is a'comin'. I can FEEEL it!

So, I've been out of work since September. My last job found out I didn't have a work permit, but promised me I could come back as soon as I sorted it out.

It was a rough job. I was bone tired all the time. But, i was good at it. I was a street fundraiser for charity. It's a dog's job. The kind only the unemployable get. Or, so they say. Yeah, I was one of the unemployable. I didn't have a work permit. I got the job anyway. I didn't lie. I didn't deceive. The form they gave me at orientation had the spot where one indicates one's right to work in the state. I left it blank. Nobody asked. They even lost the first copy of the form and asked for another. I left it blank both times. Nobody asked. Amazing.

Until last September. It was the day I got back from vacation in Scotland. We were driving to some podunk spot in the midlands not so used to us predators sucking up the life blood of hard working Ireland for the benefit of never-to-be-seen foreigners in hot, dusty places. My collegue in the back said, "Did you see the memo?" I looked and my heart sank, my stomach twisted.

The deadline for showing proof of right-to-work was two weeks away. I pressed it an extra week just to have the extra hours. But, I came clean. Went to HR and 'fessed up. I was suspended immediately that day and laid off two days later. They had to research whether they could submit for a work permit on my behalf. No dice. The director gave me the contractual one month severance, I got about ten days' vacation pay. He invited me to come back when I got my permit sorted out. I had a little money still in Texas. We'd be okay for about six months.

Eight months later I'm flat busted broke. Conor's been saving my ass, bless him. I've been pushing my CV around and have a couple freelance bites from a couple of computer magazines in London and Bath. The Herald 'Street side Field Marketing Supervisor' the guy who team leads the folks who hand out papers in the morning, says I'm next in line to fill an opening. Hell, it's €25 for a couple hours in the morning, enough to pay rent for the month. It'll get me out of the house. God knows, I GOTTA get out o'th' house!