FRIDAY, DEC 16, 2011 6:56 AM EST
Three myths about the detention bill
BY GLENN GREENWALD

Condemnation of President Obama is intense, and growing, as a result of his announced intent to sign into law the indefinite detention bill embedded in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). These denunciations come not only from the nation’s leading civil liberties and human rights groups, but also from the pro-Obama New York Times Editorial Page, which today has a scathing Editorial describing Obama’s stance as “a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency” and lamenting that “the bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can’t go into them all,” as well as from vocal Obama supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, whowrote yesterday that this episode is “another sign that his campaign pledge to be vigilant about civil liberties in the war on terror was a lie.” In damage control mode, White-House-allied groups are now trying to ride to the rescue with attacks on the ACLU and dismissive belittling of the bill’s dangers.

For that reason, it is very worthwhile to briefly examine — and debunk — the three principal myths being spread by supporters of this bill, and to do so very simply: by citing the relevant provisions of the bill, as well as the relevant passages of the original 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), so that everyone can judge for themselves what this bill actually includes (this is all above and beyond the evidence I assembled in writing about this bill yesterday):

Myth # 1: This bill does not codify indefinite detention

Read more.

The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water
By Brian WheelerBBC News, Alabama

Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt repayments if the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history is allowed to proceed.

But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama’s most populous county are its poorest residents – forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply.

And there is widespread anger in Jefferson County that swingeing sewerage rate hikes could have been avoided but for the greed, corruption and incompetence of local politicians, government officials and Wall Street financiers.

Read more.

Operation “Save Romney” and the NYTimes
By Russ Baker on Dec 15, 2011

Investigating Mitt Romney’s barber’s views

If you’ve been hitting the New York Times over the last few days, you’ve witnessed an extraordinary thing. It looks almost like the paper has decided that it is its job to save Mitt Romney’s shaky candidacy. Consider the following articles: (here’s what I remembered about each, a little while after reading them)

-Romney does not dye his hair (a la Reagan)

-Romney makes a lot of money, but doesn’t live too fancy

-Romney’s Wall Street work is, more or less, fine

Read more.

I.

“Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer”—Sen. Lindsey Graham

Sen. Lindsey Graham on the NDAA, Indefinite Detention of American Citizens

II.

A must-read summing-up by the incomparable Nigel:

re: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Obama-Will-Not-Veto-ND-by-Ralph-Lopez-111210-198.html

First, they came for the faux-terrorists, but I did nothing because I wasn’t a terrorist. Then they came for the faux-Islamofascists and Anthrax mailers, but I did nothing because, you know, I don’t look anything like those dudes. Then they came for the faux-enablers and Muslim NGOs, but again I did nothing ’cause Black Thursday was coming up and a man’s got to set priorities. When they came for those peaceful Occupy folks, I felt bad about a few of them getting sprayed and beaten and all, but you just can’t have folks clogging up the streets 24/7, can you?

Finally, just as I got my new x43yy22 iPhone customized to fit me like a glove, damn if they didn’t come for me. ME! What did I do? I’d call the ACLU. or somebody, but they tell me that there will be no calls to anybody until they “check me out.” Don’t know for sure, but it sounds like that may be awhile. And when I demanded they tell me what crime I was being charged with, the guard at my door told me I ‘d better shut up and quit giving them lip or I might end up being ‘Manninged.” I had never heard of that, but it didn’t sound like it would be a good thing for me. Won’t somebody tell me if they’re allowed to do this to me?

Well, here we are at yet another latter-day Rubicon; this one with a shore too far, I fear. We’ve seen this coming for some time, but there is now far more evidence that Obama will actually sign this monstrous betrayal of a bill. All of his petty larceny of our rights up to now may be about to come into full proper perspective. Compared to this year’s NDAA – National Defense Authorization Act – it’s all been chump change.

If you’re wondering why all this is happening now, wonder no more. There’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that riots and protests abroad and at home have scared the bejeezus out of the gentle few who run the world. No, not the presidents, prime ministers and tin-pot dictators you silly goose. I mean the real rulers of this planet: the multi-national corporations (MNCs) and the infinitesimal few who run them. All this pandemonium is bad for ‘bid’ness, ‘ (and the stability of the markets) doncha know. I mean, if the Greek people were to bring down their government, why, The Nexi might lose all that lovely lolly they’ve striven so hard to steal. If a few other countries got the idea that nations could just waltz away from their sovereign debts, homeowners their fiat-kited mortgages and so on, well, too much of that type of ‘moral hazard’ and the whole toxic, steaming pile of fiat ka-ka comes crashing down in one big brown landslide.

It’s a good thing they banished the word ‘Iceland’ from their wholly-owned subsidiary, the corporate media (here and in Europe). Wouldn’t want the sheeple to get the idea that Iceland had set any kind of a precedent, or something. I mean, those descendents of Vikings and Celts as much as told the banksters to go take a flying fuck in a rolling doughnut before they’d see one crooked krona out of them. The nerve!

Now, the bad news. The other thing all this commotion does is throw sand in The Nexi’s gears. They are now on track (they think) to sew up the planet like a drawstring bag… with us inside. These sociopathic fools’ globalist dream is to ensure that all of us become so desperate that we will do whatever they say we must do in order to survive. As I write this, the various branches of the MNC (mutlinationals) ‘family’ are in constant contact with one another as they plot (they don’t need to convene a Bilderburg Conference to get ‘er done – that’;s just a show of force for the Alex Joneses of the world to get het up about) how to deal with the various ‘people’s eruptions ‘in their respective oligarchic corners of the world.

The plain fact is that many of us are awakening from our slumber of the past 150 years; especially the last 30. The super-duper Industrial Age is drawing to a close. With our always sharp 20-20 hindsight, we are now able to see that it was unsustainable from the git-go (1835 being as good a year as any) and oil’s reign among men has been severely curtailed by the constant manipulation and conniving by The Nexi to steal, by hook or by crook, the fabulous fruits of the age of ultra-cheap energy.

In short, The Nexi – our Avarice Addicts – our Mavens of Mammon – have pissed away about a third of the three trillion barrels of oil in endless wars and constant interference (bribery, buyouts, intimidation, sabotage and murder, in roughly that order, to name just a few) in innovative improvements on the internal combustion engine model (risibly referred to as the ‘marketplace’ of ideas). Our cars today get fewer MPGs than did the Model T. The reason for this and a host of other stupid stuff (SUVs) is to use up as much of the oil as possible (and hence string out the return on Nexi investment) before the game is up and the public tumbles to the fact that they have, in fact, been taken for a century-and-a-half-long ‘ride.’ And that’s just the dirty tricks applied to one piece of scientific and technological advances.

Human civilizaton has been with us for a very brief time, geologically speaking: some 6,000 to 10,000 years, depending on one’s notion of ‘civilization.’ For all the history being made, during that period, human population stayed steady at under a billion all the way up to roughly 1850. It then began rising in an ever-steepening incline. Ditto our use of fossil fuels, natural resources and so on. We stand at 7 billion today; one billion of us not being even a glint in daddy’s eye until the turn of this millennium. But, population isn’t our problem now, inequality is.

For all the trillions upon trillions made as a result of cheap energy, somehow, the mostly Anglo and Hispanic misanthopes – driven by mammon and religious certainty – who have run the world these past 500+ years have not seen fit to share such abundance with the vast majority of humanity. If they weren’t enslaving them by brute force, ethnically cleansing the life out of them, screwing them out of their natural resources or, in the modern age, re-enslaving them anew by the white man’s specious and sinister magic of fiat money and fractional reserve debt-slavery, they made sure that the conquered tribes never caught a break. While there have been occasional lulls in the unseemly rush to profit off one’s fellow man (and woman), mostly we are where we are today because the human mind is not capable of dealing fairly and constructively with overweening power (Rome, America) and its toxic concomitant, boundless wealth.

Human societies also fail whenever they disregard man’s essential connection to this Earth (and earth) and one another and, most important, her/his undeniable spirituality*, that je ne sais quoi essential to our finest moments as human beings.

*Not to be confused, or conflated, with his cynical, misogynist, manipulatory, monotheisms.

So, the measure that Obama will sign this week (I will be as happy and as surprised as you if he punts) will allow our increasingly militarized police and paramilitaries that are slowly replacing the duties of the street cops, to act in ways not too different from those of Hitler’s SS or East Germany’s Stazi. It is amazing for this civil libertarian to witness such onrushing oppression with a rate of descent of theValkyries. The Nexi know they must have a way to blunt the power of the people – the only power they really fear – whenever push comes to shove; as it inevitably must. Malke no mistake, their aim is to avoid, at all costs, violence. But, if it must be so, they won’t shrink away from it.

Now that we’ve seen open coordination between mayors and governors agreeing on how to ‘clean up’ (one mayor’s way of putting it) the Occupy protestors, there should be little doubt in anyone’s mind thatThe Nexi will do whatever it takes to maintain the chimera of order as long as they possibly can, even as they increase their sway in the world.

Power rarely surrenders power to less power. But, as the mask slips and more of The Nexi’s dreadful plans for us are increasingly revealed (Draconian oppression is hard to hide), they will come to rely more and more on physical coercion instead of that which has worked so well for them since the invention of unions and social causes (as cuckolds and ulterior cover) in the teens and 20s: control of the media, the buying of governments, distraction by lots of shiny toys, manipulation of patriotism, sports and religious fervor, and other devices, ad infinitum.

As nearly as I can determine, these few humans – The Nexi – seem to have no identifiable moral coda that includes the rest of the family of man in it. I believe that the unquenchable lust for power and wealth has always rendered man devoid of introspection, compassion and altruistic principle. How else to explain the consistent cleaving to such amoral, myopic and cavalier response in his behaviour toward those vastly less powerful than himself.

Amy’s show yesterday provides this sad, borderline resigned, interview:

libs INDEFINITE DETENTION – NO 4th, NO 6th, NO 8th – ACLU ATTORNEY Chris Anders w Amy #10.06 dn 12-14-11

NjW 402

Clear Channel May Keep AM Progressive Talk’s Green960 on Air in San Francisco After All

The only progressive AM talk radio station, Green960, in one of the nation’s most progressive cities, San Francisco, may be allowed to stay on the public airwaves after all in the 2012 Presidential Election year!

Last week we detailed corporate radio giant Clear Channel’s plans to remove Green960 (call letters KKGN) from the AM dial and send it to the radio ghetto otherwise known as “HD2″, a band that requires a special receiver that very few people actually own. Adding insult to injury, the 960 spot on the AM dial would be replaced with Glenn Beck and other Rightwing talkers from Clear Channel’s “conservative” talk station “Fox News Radio KNEW” which is currently on 910, but would move to the 960 frequency.

In the 910 slot, Clear Channel had planned to launch a new talk station, which would also include some Fox talkers, branded as “San Francisco’s Talk 910 KKSF”.

If plans move ahead as previously announced, the end result would be that — except for progressive talker Randi Rhodes, who is syndicated by Clear Channel’s syndication arm Premier Broadcasting and who would be allowed to keep her live Noon-3p PT slot on both the new KNEW 960, as well as the “HD2″ schedule where the current Green960 line-up would be sent to — there would be no progressive AM talk station on the air in San Francisco.

The entire shuffle was set to occur at the beginning of the 2012 Presidential Election year on January 3rd, a move that had raised at least a few eyebrows, as Clear Channel is now owned by the Mitt Romney-founded venture capital firm, Bain Capital LLC.

Well, now that entire plan, according to one industry website and several insider sources I’ve spoken to today, may be on hold and Green960′s popular line-up of progressive talkers like Rhodes, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Norman Goldman, Mike Malloy (for whom I am a regular guest-host, including on tonight’s show), and others may be allowed to stay on the AM air after all!…

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8994

And yet Obama’s in their pocket (notwithstanding the First Lady’s organic veggie garden).

MCM

http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/alert/?alertid=58601501

Monsanto’s Micro-Monster Could Kill Us All
Tell Sec. Vilsack to Heed Dr. Huber’s Warning!

“Small Business Owner” in Walker Ad Actually a Billionaire That Helped Outsource Thousands of Jobs to China
Submitted by Jud Lounsbury on Fri, 12/16/2011 – 1:19pm

Oh, oh, oh, oh sweet irony of mine!

So, yesterday we learn that for the fifth month in a row, Wisconsin has led the nation in jobs- lost AND that another large (and very profitable) company– Thermo Fisher– is a closing its plant in Two Rivers as part of a larger transition toward non-American labor in Mexico and elsewhere.

In the midst of this carnage, Walker has the nerve to put up an ad with “Chris” who is purportedly a small business owner that is extolling the virtues of Scott Walker’s job-creatin’ business utopia… that is losing more jobs than other state.

Read more.

Which would be no surprise. But it’s still necessary to urge him not to. 

MCM

From a friend:

Please take a moment on this Friday afternoon to pick up the phone and tell Obama to stand strong and keep his promise.

Thanks very much.

And why not? When, over two years ago, Obama gave the speech announcing his imperial policy of “preventive” detention without trial, he was standing in the National Archives, posed with the original Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence.

MCM

Indefinite Military Detention Measure Passes On Bill Of Rights Day
by Michael McAuliff
First Posted: 12/15/11 05:24 PM ET Updated: 12/15/11 08:30 PM ET

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a defense bill Thursday that authorizes indefinite detentions of American terrorism suspects, coincidentally acting on the controversial measure on the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, passed 86 to 13 and is expected to be signed quickly by President Obama, who withdrew a veto threat against the bill Wednesday. Six Democrats, six Republicans and one independent opposed the bill.

Though the legislation passed overwhelmingly, several senators argued that it was threatening fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, which is celebrated every Dec. 15.

Read more.