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Bernie Sanders On 2016: We Need "A Political Revolution"

September 12, 2014, 11:35 am
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Bernie Sanders on 2016: We need ‘a political revolution’


There’s a fable in Democratic circles about the time Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s self-described socialist senator, who is visiting Iowa this weekend as he considers a presidential bid, apologized to Bill Clinton. It was right after “Hillarycare,” the health reform plan championed by Clinton’s wife, went down in flames.

After Sanders apologized to the president, Clinton allegedly replied to the then-House member, “What do you mean, Bernie? You were with me every step of the way!” “Exactly,” Sanders responded. “I should have been burning you in effigy on the steps of the Capitol. Then people would have understood how moderate your plan really was.”

With Sanders’ Iowa visit coinciding with Hillary Clinton’s much-anticipated return to the state, some Democrats have wondered if the senator’s presidential ambitions are merely an elaborate display of effigy-burning – an attempt to move Clinton and the center of gravity of the entire party to the left.

Not so, the senator says. “If I run, I would like to win. That’s why I would run,” he told msnbc Thursday. He’s not interested in being a protest candidate, he insists. 

Sanders realizes it’s a long shot. “For me to win, it would require a grassroots effort on the part of literally millions of people. Unprecedented,” he says. “What we need now is a political revolution.”

His theory of success is to try to reach the untapped potential of the 60% or so of Americans who don’t typically vote in presidential elections. He realizes that’s not easy. “How do we engage – can we engage those people? Tough stuff,” he acknowledges.

After encouraging a reporter to sit in his office, Sanders continues to stand for the duration of the interview, at one point lifting his foot up onto the coffee table and raising a knee.
He has upset expectations before. Sanders got his start in politics in 1981, when he surprised everyone by becoming Burlington’s first independent mayor after defeating a Democrat who had served five terms. In subsequent reelection battles, Sanders fended off challengers endorsed by both major parties.

He did that, he says, by building “broad coalitions” in unexpected places. It’s the same model he’d try to use on a national scale. “I think there’s a lot of common ground in this country where working people are ready to come together to stand up to a billionaire class which is getting richer while the rest of the country is getting poorer,” he says.




“What we need now is a political revolution.”
BERNIE SANDERS
Of course, Des Moines – let alone the entire country – is not Burlington. “No, I’m not confident I could raise enough money,” he says with a laugh. While he’s proud that he gets more small donations than most senators, that’s not enough to make up for the biggest checks. “Of course I would be outspent.”


Still, he sees hope in a string of recent upsets, including Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, both of whom were trounced in their party primaries, and Zephyr Teachout, the progressive professor who took a surprisingly large chunk out of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s margin this week in a Democratic primary.  

“It kind of confirms what I believe to be the case, which is that the establishment is much more vulnerable than I think conventional wisdom suggests,” Sanders says.

Be that as it may, he has no interest in taking on Clinton directly and chafes at people asking about the former secretary of state.


“I’ve noticed in a number of talks that I’ve had that I will talk about 10 different issues that are important to me, and at the last minute somebody will ask me about Hillary Clinton. I’ll say a statement about Hillary Clinton, and that becomes the story,” he laments.

“Are you going to ask me about Hillary Clinton’s hairdo?” he snarks later.

In addition to the billionaires, he sees an enemy in the Clinton-obsessed “media establishment,” knowing full well how the press is likely to view his campaign, should he run. “One of the concerns I have in terms of a campaign is whether or not the media would allow serious debates on issues,” he says.

Those issues include reforming campaign finance laws and tackling income inequality, – “If we don’t begin to reverse that, we will look more like an oligarchy rather than a democratic society with a sure middle class,” he says – dealing with climate change, reforming free trade policies, raising the minimum wage, and creating jobs through a massive federal infrastructure program.
On Vice President Joe Biden, who is also considering a run and will be in Iowa days after Sanders, the senator says only, “Joe Biden is a decent guy. If he decides to run for president, he’ll raise his issues.”


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Unexpectedly Successful Democratic Voter Registration Drive Turns Georgia Purple

September 12, 2014, 11:43 am
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Photo by Stephen Morton/Getty Images

Board of Elections Customer Service Supervisor Sabrina German hands out absentee ballots during early voting on Oct. 23, 2008, in Savannah, Georgia. If more minorities register and vote, Georgia could be a red state no more.

Running Scared


Georgia’s Democrats have registered more than 85,000 minority voters (and counting). Republicans never saw it coming.

In 2008, under the best possible conditions for a Democrat, Barack Obama lost Georgia by just over 200,000 votes, or 5.2 percent of Georgians who voted. Four years later he lost again by just over 300,000 votes, or 7.8 percent of Georgians who voted. By any measure the state is a reach for Democrats. And yet, the party is optimistic, both now—Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter, its Senate and gubernatorial candidates, respectively, are running close races—and for the future.

Jamelle BouieJAMELLE BOUIE
Jamelle Bouie is a Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race.

The “why” is easy to answer: Georgia has roughly 700,000 unregistered black voters. If Democrats could cut that number by less than a third—and bring nearly 200,000 likely Democrats to the polls—they would turn a red state purple, and land a major blow to the national Republican Party. Or, as Michelle Obama said during a campaign rally on Monday, “If just 50 Democratic voters per precinct who didn’t vote in 2010 get out and vote this November—just 50 per precinct—then Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter will win.” Given 2,727 precincts in Georgia, that’s just 136,350 new voters.
Enter the New Georgia Project. Led by Stacey Abrams, Democratic leader in the state House of Representatives, the project is meant to do just that—register hundreds of thousands of blacks and other minorities. Their goal, says Abrams, is to “directly or indirectly collect 120,000 voter registration applications.” That could be enough to push Democrats over the top. And it makes the project one of the largest voter registration drives in recent Georgia history.
So far, it’s been a success. “In addition to the 85,000 we have collected as an organization directly,” says Abrams, “we have also supported the efforts of 12 organizations around the state. We know there are groups doing registration in the Latino community, in the Asian community, and in the youth community, and we wanted to support their efforts as well.” These groups, she says, have collected 20,000 to 25,000 applications, putting the New Georgia Project in striking distance of its goal two months before Election Day.
Which brings us to this week. On Tuesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp—a Republican—said his office was investigating allegations of voter fraud from the New Georgia Project, following complaints about voter applications submitted by the group. To that end, Kemp has issued subpoenas to the group and its parent organization, Third Sector Development.
“Preliminary investigation has revealed significant illegal activities’ including forged voter registration applications, forged signatures on releases, and applications with false or inaccurate information,” he wrote in a memo to county election officials.

To Abrams, this has less to do with protecting the process and more to do with suppressing the registration effort. After all, she notes, Georgia law “requires that we turn in all application forms we collect, regardless of concerns over validity.” It’s the job of the secretary of state, she says, to determine the status of the applications. “We do not get to make the decisions about whether or not a form is valid or not.”
She’s right. “A private entity shall promptly transmit all completed voter registration applications to the Secretary of State or the appropriate board of registrars within ten days after receiving the application or by the close of registration, whichever period is earlier,” says the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office website. Nowhere are private organizations asked or required to filter or discard applications.
There’s little information on the scope of the alleged fraud. But there is anaggressive subpoena that, Abrams says, “essentially demands every document we have ever produced.” She calls it a “fishing expedition” meant to “suppress our efforts.” A spokesperson for the New Georgia Project, the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church, was a little more explicit. “I see this move by the secretary of state as the latest effort in voter suppression in the state of Georgia,” he said.
Kemp insists that this investigation is impartial and nonpartisan. “At the end of the day this is not going to be about politics,” he told a local reporter. “This is about potential fraud which we think happened.” At the same time, Abrams and Warnock are rightfully suspicious. Not only was Kemp a vocal supporter of the state’s divisive voter identification law, but he’s a Republican in a state where the GOP has worked hard to dilute the strength of black voters.
Under the old Voting Rights Act, Georgia officials had to clear voting changes with the Justice Department, and for good reason: The state had a long history of disenfranchisement, and “preclearance” was a way to pre-empt discrimination or prevent it entirely.
That changed with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder last year,which struck preclearance from the VRA. Now, along with other Southern states, Georgia was free to change its laws and procedures for voting. And it did. That year, in Augusta—which has a large black population—officials moved municipal elections from their traditional November dates, a change with huge, negative effects on turnout. (For a case study, look to Ferguson, Missouri.)
Likewise, officials in rural Greene County implemented a redistricting plan previously blocked by the Justice Department, and lawmakers in Morgan County floated a plan to eliminate half the area’s polling sites, a move that would have its greatest effect on low-income and minority voters.
Then, Georgia Democrats realized they could play the same game. Last week officials in the large, mostly black area of DeKalb County announced plans for Sunday voting for the upcoming November election. The state’s Republican lawmakers have responded with outrage. “[T]his location is dominated by African American shoppers and it is near several large African American mega churches such as New Birth Missionary Baptist,” said state Sen. Fran Millar, citing the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway, “I’m sure Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter are delighted with this blatantly partisan move in DeKalb.” Millar is investigating ways to “stop this action,” and hopes to “eliminate this election law loophole.”


Against this backdrop of voter suppression, it’s no surprise Abrams is suspicious of the state’s investigation: From the harsh accusations of “fraud” to the aggressive actions from Kemp, it looks like another attack on efforts to increase participation and diversify the electorate.
With that said, there’s only so long Republicans can hope to win through such divisive methods. Six years ago, a “purple” Georgia was a pipe dream. Now, in a year when Republicans have the national advantage, it’s a possibility. The pace of demographic change is so fast that, soon enough, Democrats like Abrams won’t have to work to change the electorate—it will have happened on its own.
Jamelle Bouie is a Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race.
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Forget Gerrymandering. Here's What We Need To Fix For Fair Elections

September 12, 2014, 11:45 am
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Photo by Eric Thayer/Reuters

Conservative voters essentially underrepresented in liberal Rep. Nydia Velazquez’s New York City congressional district.

The Biggest Problem in American Politics


Forget gerrymandering. Here’s what we need to fix to ensure truly fair elections.

As a conservative living in New York City, my vote for Congress is essentially a socially approved form of venting. A short while ago, I moved from an extremely liberal neighborhood in Manhattan to an extremely liberal neighborhood in Brooklyn. In my old apartment, I was represented by Jerrold Nadler, an extremely liberal Democrat. In 2012, he defeated his Republican opponent, the redoubtable Michael Chan, by a margin of 69.8 percent to 16.6 percent. In my new home, I am represented by Nydia Velázquez, also an extremely liberal Democrat. She trounced her Conservative Partyopponent, James Murray, by 79 percent to 4.4 percent in 2012. More depressing still, Murray was crushed by blank ballots, which accounted for more than 16 percent of the total. Something tells me that Velázquez is not losing sleep over her re-election bid.
To be sure, had I moved to Staten Island or Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, I would have found myself in the congressional district of Michael Grimm, a colorful Republican who likes to mix it up with the press. But Grimm is considered one of the mostendangered incumbents in the House, thanks in no small part to, um, a 20-count federal indictment relating to, among other things, his alleged mismanagement of his old health food store, Healthalicious. (You know, the usual.) There is an excellent chance that in a few months’ time, New York City’s congressional delegation will consist entirely of Democrats.
None of this should come as a shock. New York City is a liberal town, and I’ve long since resigned myself to being part of a small political minority. What I find galling is that, as observed in May by Rob Richie, the executive director of the electoral reform group FairVote, there are actually quite a few conservatives in New York City—believe it or not, Mitt Romney won 435,000 votes here. If Grimm goes down in November, Republicans in New York City will have no representation at the national level, an outcome that Richie rightly sees as a reflection of a much larger problem.
I don’t expect you to weep for the Big Apple’s hearty band of unreconstructed Reaganites, as we are, after all, free to pick up stakes and move to Wyoming. Yet the problem we face—that our political influence doesn’t match our numbers—is one faced by many groups, including liberals in conservative parts of the country, and members of racial, ethnic, and other minorities who want and consistently fail to get their fair share of political power. The root of the problem, as Richie and the good people at FairVote have long maintained, lies in our reliance on single-member districts to elect legislators.
What’s wrong with single-member districts? Let’s start with gerrymandering, the practice in which the officials charged with drawing the boundaries of our various legislative districts do so with an eye toward boosting the members of a particular political party or group. There are many people who believe that gerrymandering is the root of all evil in American political life, and that we need to draw districts in an entirely apolitical manner. That is a fantasy. As long as we have single-member districts, it is inevitable that some group of people will be disadvantaged by the lines we draw, whether or not the line-drawers have sinister motives.
Take the problem of Democratic underrepresentation in the House. If we assume that the parties should win congressional seats roughly in proportion to their share of the vote, Democrats in 2012 were underrepresented by a whopping 18 seats, according to an analysis by Christopher Ingraham. In Pennsylvania, for example, Democratic candidates won just more than 50 percent of the vote in the 2012 congressional elections while winning just five of the state’s 18 congressional districts.
Nate Cohn of the New York Times’ Upshot has written that while partisan gerrymandering has indeed given Republicans an edge in holding the House of Representatives, the deeper problem is that Democrats are highly concentrated in densely populated urban and suburban districts, like those in and around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. By contrast, Republicans are, as a general rule, more evenly distributed across the map, which allows them to win more rural Pennsylvania districts with smaller margins. Slate’s David Weigel hasreplied, reasonably enough, that there is an easy workaround to the fact that Democrats like to live cheek-by-jowl: simply carve up the cities in which they live and parcel them out across different congressional districts that also include less densely populated Republican territory. But this approach seems like just another way to institutionalize unfairness. If we wind up with pizza-slice districts that distribute Democrats into a larger number of heterogeneous districts, Republicans will complain that their voices have been squelched.
If our goal is to create legislative districts that truly reflect their electorates, our best bet would be to give up on single-member districts altogether and replace them with multi-member ones. Take the case of my tribe, the forlorn conservatives of New York City. Even if the New York state Legislature decided that it wanted to carve out a new district to represent conservatives scattered across the five boroughs, and not just those in Michael Grimm’s swing district, they’d have an almost impossible time doing so. For one thing, we don’t all live in a heavily Republican enclave called “Giulianiville.” A similar problem arises for minority groups that aren’t isolated in particular neighborhoods. The only reason it is possible to draw majority-minority districts for blacks in the Deep South and some Northern and Western cities is that black segregation is still with us. Drawing majority-minority districts for less-segregated minorities, like Asians, is a different story. (The only Asian-majority congressional district in the United States is in Hawaii, though there is one district in California’s Silicon Valley that comes close.)
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How Big Infrastructural Improvement Is Really Good For Workers And The Economy

September 12, 2014, 11:45 am
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Where Republican States Opposed To Medicaid Expansion Now Stand

September 12, 2014, 11:53 am
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"ALABAMA GOVERNOR'S REFUSAL TO EXPAND MEDICAID WILL COST STATE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS"


"GOP's Anti-Medicaid Expansion Body Count, By State"


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"Why Are Murderous GOP Governors Protected By The Press?"

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Alan: In addition to the three Republican states now planning to expand Medicaid, I predict we will see even more AFTER this year's November election.

***


Remember that red-blue state divide on Medicaid expansion. 
Here's an update on where states stand. Advisory Board Daily Briefing



***

The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism

The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its insistence on a socio-economic threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die. 

The sooner the better. 

Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right." 

To allay this chthonic anxiety, they resort to Human Sacrifice,  hoping that spilled blood will placate "the angry gods," including the one they've made of themselves. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/harvard-study-45000-americans-die.html 

Having poked their eyes out, they fail to see  that self-generated wrath creates "the gods" who hold them thrall.

Almost "to a man," contemporary "conservatives" have apotheosized themselves and now -- sitting on God's usurped throne -- are rabid to pass Final Judgment. 

Self-proclaimed Christians, eager to thrust "the undeserving" through The Gates of Hell, are the very people most likely to cross its threshold. 

Remarkably, none of them are tempted to believe this. 





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If Your State Resisted Obamacare, Here's What Opposition Costs Individual Citizens

September 12, 2014, 11:53 am
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Did your state resist Obamacare? That may have cost you. "In the five states most resistant to Obamacare implementation — Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming — those purchasing their own health insurance were $245 worse off on an annual basis when compared to enrollees in all other states' individual markets....These 'direct enforcement' states... saw smaller coverage increases over this time. Even though premiums in these states started out lower, they almost caught up by the end of the second quarter of 2014. And though the average cost per enrollee started much lower in direct enforcement states, the costs exceeded all other states by the end of the second quarter." Jason Millman in The Washington Post


"Obamacare And The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism"



"Republicans Finally Admit Why They Hate Obamacare"

"GOP's Anti-Medicaid Expansion Body Count, By State"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/03/gops-anti-medicare-expansion-body-count.html

"Why Are Murderous GOP Governors Protected By The Press?"

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The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism

The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its insistence on a socio-economic threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die. 

The sooner the better. 

Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right." 

To allay this chthonic anxiety, they resort to Human Sacrifice,  hoping that spilled blood will placate "the angry gods," including the one they've made of themselves. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/harvard-study-45000-americans-die.html 

Having poked their eyes out, they fail to see  that self-generated wrath creates "the gods" who hold them thrall.

Almost "to a man," contemporary "conservatives" have apotheosized themselves and now -- sitting on God's usurped throne -- are rabid to pass Final Judgment. 

Self-proclaimed Christians, eager to thrust "the undeserving" through The Gates of Hell, are the very people most likely to cross its threshold. 

Remarkably, none of them are tempted to believe this. 
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Conservative Numbskulls. The People Who Need Help Most Can't Use Tax Credits!

September 12, 2014, 11:55 am
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Italian Proverb: "A full belly does not believe in hunger."

Alan: Flat cortex conservatives keep suggesting "tax credits" as a solution to social and political problems. Look! Mitt Romney famously pointed out that 47% of Americans don't pay any federal or taxes. So... What, prithee, is the benefit of tax credits to those Americans most in need of relief?

Business Insider puts the percentage of citizen "parasites" at 43% - http://www.businessinsider.com/43-of-americans-dont-pay-federal-income-tax-2013-9.

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Obamacare worsens economic inequality. "The best available evidence suggests that most of the lag in earnings growth for low income workers relative to high income workers can be attributed to the rapid increase in the cost of health insurance benefits provided to workers by employers. More importantly, because of its flawed design, Obamacare will aggravate this problem even further among large firm workers and create unnecessary distortions that will be particularly pronounced in the labor markets for low-wage workers....A far more sensible approach that would avoid all these economic distortions and attendant adverse effects on economic inequality is to get rid of the individual and employer mandates entirely and to make all Americans eligible for standardized tax credits." Chris Conover in Forbes.


***

The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism

The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its insistence on a socio-economic threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die. 

The sooner the better. 

Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right." 

To allay this chthonic anxiety, they resort to Human Sacrifice,  hoping that spilled blood will placate "the angry gods," including the one they've made of themselves. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/harvard-study-45000-americans-die.html 

Having poked their eyes out, they fail to see  that self-generated wrath creates "the gods" who hold them thrall.

Almost "to a man," contemporary "conservatives" have apotheosized themselves and now -- sitting on God's usurped throne -- are rabid to pass Final Judgment. 

Self-proclaimed Christians, eager to thrust "the undeserving" through The Gates of Hell, are the very people most likely to cross its threshold. 

Remarkably, none of them are tempted to believe this. 

***

"Obamacare And The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism"



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Picking On Black Guys Is How Dimwitted White Guys Prolong Their Own Sodomization

September 12, 2014, 1:44 pm
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Patriotic Americans limbering up for daily "dominance-submission drill" with The Ruling Class.

Pass the K-Y.

Dear John,


Since drafting this email, friend Tom Magnuson, a retired Marine and military historian, sent me the following link.

I'm putting "the last first" because it's the "best part" and hope you watch Prince Ea's video even if you blow off the rest of this missive.

"Prophecy Of World's End," by Prince Ea, Sent By Retired Marine Friend Tom"


***

Here are a couple other links - one from your native Pennsylvania and another about a guy who trashed your net worth.

"White Teen In BMW Hits Three Cars, Flees Scene, Assaults Cops, And Doesn't Get Shot"


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"The Smirk-Smiley Face Of America's Most Despicable Felon"

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Getting lathered over race is how The 1% distracts gringos from America's most dangerous and most damaging criminals, the unimpeachable plutocrats who screw everybody through direct economic exploitation, or by degrading the culture so that America's mean streets become demeaning places to live. This dependable mechanism of oppression is especially true for poor people and working class people -- usually people of color -- although it's probably time for middle class white folk to prepare for their own dispossession. 

The ungodly rich are running away with everything.



Picking on black guys is how dimwitted white guys prolong their own socio-economic sodomization.

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"Bad Black Guys." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right

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Tell a friend!

Pax vobiscum

Alan




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Ted Cruz Booed During Speech About Religion. Scolds Audience. Leaves Stage

September 12, 2014, 2:53 pm
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Alan: With friends like gung-ho Zionist Israel, who needs enemies? 
In a September 2003 interview in Elsevier, a Dutch weekly, on Israel and the dangers it faces from Iran, the Palestinians and world opinion van Creveld stated:
We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force…. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.[9]
Israeli War Historian, Martin van Creveld. Van Creveld is the only non-American whose writings are required reading by the U.S. military's Officer Corps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_van_Creveld

***

Video: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2014/09/11/ted-cruz-booed-during-speech-about-religion-walks-off-stage-after-scolding/?cmpid=GoogleNewsEditorsPicks&google_editors_picks=true


Ted Cruz Booed During Speech About Religion, Walks Off Stage After Scolding Audience

Ted Cruz was well into his keynote speech before a Christian group Wednesday night when he drew boos as he started to talk about the Jewish cause.

The U.S. senator from Texas then went off script to scold the booers, and after making several more comments in defense of Jews and Israel, drawing more heckling, walked off the stage.
In his address during a gala dinner of the “In Defense of Christians” (IDC) organization, the Tea Party Republican said: “Christians have no greater ally than Israel.”
That drew boos from some in the crowd, prompting Cruz to denounce it as bigotry and hate. 
He said to the audience: "Those who hate Israel hate America," and "Those who hate Jews hate Christians."
Cruz said in a statement that he had no choice but to walk off the stage.
IDC released a statement too, saying in part: "A few politically motivated opportunists chose to divide a room that for more than 48 hours sought unity in opposing the shared threat of genocide, faced not only by our Christian brothers and sisters, but our Jewish brothers and sisters and people of all other faiths and all people of good will.
"Tonight’s injection of politics when the focus should have been on unity and faith, momentarily played into the hands of a few who do not adhere to IDC’s principles. They were made no longer welcome," it added.
Ted Cruz, mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2016, called anti-Semitism an evil that was evident at the dinner. He said he told members of the audience that if they won't stand with Israel and the Jewish people, then he will not stand with them.
The Texas senator, 43, is part Cuban, part Italian and part Irish. He comes from a Roman Catholic family but was converted by his parents to Southern Baptism at a young age.
"In Defense of Christians" is a group that focuses on persecuted Christian and minority communities in the Middle East. Cruz was speaking to them at their summit in Washington D.C.
A video of the event shows Cruz saying before he left the stage: “I will say this: I’m saddened to see that some here, not everyone, are so consumed with hate.”
That led to more booing and some yelling from members of the audience, Politico reported.
Cruz told some media outlets that he had planned to speak about how the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and other terrorist groups were a threat to Jews and Christians.
“I told the attendees that those who hate Israel also hate America,” he said, according to Politico. “That those who hate Jews also hate Christians. And that anyone who hates Israel and the Jewish people is not following the teachings of Christ. These statements were met with angry boos.”
“Anti-Semitism is a corrosive evil, and it reared its ugly head tonight,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Tom Toles Cartoon: "The Debate On Climate Has Changed"

September 13, 2014, 8:40 am
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Alan: Except for the hope of "making more money," conservatives are essentially desperate people convinced that - this side of military intervention - nothing can be done. 

Despite their chatter about the importance of "personal responsibility," they believe that "God will take out the garbage," or, He will entrust the task to The Invisible Hand.

In either event, they don't have to do anything.

Except...

... make more money.

***

Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.



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How Whole-Cloth Falsehoods Take Root: John Kennedy And Ronald Reagan

September 13, 2014, 9:17 am
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[​IMG]



The first step in debunking a quote is to find the original source. In this case the debunking is easy, because there is no original source.

Alan: Technically, it is impossible to prove that a quotation does not exist since, in the final analysis, there are many "personal communications" that have never been publicly published but which were, in fact, communicated by word of mouth. That said, "bilge is bilge." Generally speaking, one could easily track down all documented communications by JFK from the seventh day before his death. Ever since Ronald Reagan normalized fiction as truth, American conservatives have dedicated themselves to ridiculous extrapolation from "technicality" and "exceptions to rules" so that they "become"New Rules.

Priceless Reagan Quotations

Ronald Reagan: Facts Are Stupid Things

 Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of Ronald Reagan Posts

The Death of Epistemology

The Death of Epistemology: Anti-Vaccine Expert (And Playboy Model) Jenny McCarthy


Kennedy never said that. It's a made-up quote. 

The quote does not exist in any book indexed by Google, or Amazon. Zero results. Compare that with the "Monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" quote, which gets over 1,520 results in Google books. This means the "quote" is so new that it's not even got into any conspiracy books yet. And not only is there no record of him having said it, there's no record of anyone even claiming he said it. 

Seven days before his Nov 22 1963 assassination would be November 15th, 1963. On Nov 14th JFK gave a news conference:where he said nothing at all like that quote. That news conference is sometimes attributed to Nov 15th, as it appeared in the NYT the following day. Actually on Nov 15th, JFK gave two speeches.

The first was to the AFL-CIO labor organization, and was a generally upbeat assessment of American industry. 

The second was the to Catholic Youth Organization, and is slightly closer in tone, but still nothing like what is claimed. The following is an actual quote from JFK in that speech, and is the only thing of record that he said that day that remotely resembles the claimed quote:





The invented quote could possibly be an extreme corruption of this, but is more likely a paraphrasing of elements of the April 27th 1961 "conspiracy" speech that led to other mis-quotes:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/16...-by-a-monolithic-and-ruthless-conspiracy-quot

I did a little digging to try to find some possible origins of the "enslave", and the earliest usages:

Earliest full mention on Usenet: 4/10/2004





This has a different initial wording from the original. It's simply a quote in the signature of Dick Eastman, and could conceivably be the origin. I emailed Dick Eastman, but he did not remember where he heard the quote. Perhaps he wrote down someone else's paraphrasing of the "Monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" quote. One can imagine a preacher coming up with this version when preaching a sermon on the lessons JFK left us. But we'll probably never know where it really came from. 

There are a couple of earlier posts on Usenet that sound somewhat similar. 

Usenet post by Virgil Gray, 11/25/2001




alt.conspiracy post 1/18/1996




There is also some discussion on Snopes, and on Reddit.

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Bill Cosby's Carefully Idealized Life: It's Complicated

September 13, 2014, 9:35 am
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The way black people should be.




Out Loud: The Complicated Life of Bill Cosby

BY 


In this week’s magazine, Kelefa Sanneh writes on the life and work of the comedian Bill Cosby, who is in the midst of a late-career comeback, and is the subject of “Cosby: His Life and Times,” a new biography by Mark Whitaker. Sanneh and Sarah Larson, a cultural correspondent for newyorker.com, appear on this week’s Out Loud to discuss the comedian with Michael Agger, the culture editor of the Web site.
Cosby is best known for his role as Cliff Huxtable, the lovable patriarch on “The Cosby Show,” but his life and comedy are far more complicated than many of his fans might be aware. Cosby has used his own experiences for inspiration throughout his career, beginning with his early, explicitly political standup.  “There’s something slightly obsessive about the process of constantly reimagining your life, first for the stage and standup and then on TV, and sort of trying to create the perfect, idealized version of your own family life,” Sanneh says. But the public image that Cosby has created leaves out troubling aspects of his personal life and controversial statements he’s made about race in America. Larson mentions the handful of accusations of sexual harassment and assault that have been brought against the comedian—it’s hard to reconcile those allegations, she says, with “the figure we all grew up with and this sort of father to everybody.”
"Bad Black People:
Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right"
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Despite Dismissive Pundits, Rick Perry Could Very Well Do Prison Time

September 13, 2014, 10:06 am
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Rick Perry might go away for a long, long time: What even the liberal media isn't reporting about his indictment
NPR: "Rick Perry's Legal Troubles: The Line Between Influence And Coercion"

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Rick Perry might go away for a long, long time: What even the liberal media isn’t reporting about his indictment

New York Times, Wall Street Journal & USA Today brush felony charges aside. They're not telling you everything

At least in 2012, Rick Perry realized he’d forgotten the name of the federal department he wanted to abolish.  But when it comes to the charges he’s just been indicted for, he’s certain of what they are. “Bribery,” he said in New Hampshire recently — but he’s wrong. It’s not exactly a strong position to start from if you’re going to loudly proclaim your innocence.  At least he’s got one thing right: “I don’t really understand the details,” he added.
In that, Perry is far from alone.  Few, if any, of his high-profile defenders, either left or right, seem to understand much more than he does. Still, you don’t have to be a lawyer to at least have some idea of what’s being charged.  The indictment is online for anyone to read, and it’s not that hard to understand — one count for abuse of official capacity, the other for coercion of a public official. Yet few in the national media seem to have figured that out.
Glenn W. Smith is director of the Progress Texas PAC, so he knows a thing or two about the Lone Star state.  He was also part of George Lakoff’s Rockridge Institute, so he’s got a broader intellectual perspective as well — just the combination one would want for a perspective on what’s going on here.
“It was very clear to me that some of the pundits-at-a-distance based their initial opinions on two false assumptions,” Smith said, via email, “1) That the Perry indictments were the product of a nest of angry but unsophisticated Austin liberals; 2) That it was a governor’s constitutional power of the veto that was being challenged.”
There are other major points of misinformation, as we’ll soon see, but these two do seem to be most central. Smith continued:
Now, here is how a journalist’s mind should work (think of a police reporter or any reporter engaged by necessity with daily human messiness). In this instance, faced with the facts that not one but two Republican judges failed to dismiss the criminal complaint against Perry and that an accomplished, conservative special prosecutor had overseen the grand jury indictment, a street-level reporter would think, “There must be more to the game that’s afoot than the Perry narrative wants me to believe.”
Lacunae are the guiding lights of golden age journalism. This is the practice that leads to “scoops.” It is exactly why Woodward and Bernstein’s youthful beat experience allowed them to get and keep the lead on Watergate reporting. Their instincts told them there had to be more to the story and they followed their instincts.
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Smith’s point is spot on — if you can first spot the holes. Unfortunately, most of the national media seems totally unaware that there are holes in Perry’s narrative. The sharp divide between national and state-level coverage was highlighted in a critical overview at Media Matters, by veteran reporter Joe Strupp (“Texas Journalists Urge National Press to Take Perry Case More Seriously”).
“A very clear divide has arisen in coverage of the Perry indictments,” Strupp told Salon, “with the local Texas media giving the case what appears to be the attention it deserves, and noting it’s a valid complaint to at least review and take to trial, given that the grand jury made the decision that it did, while national press or most of the national press is brushing it off to politics, and some kind of perceived payback against Perry.”
As examples of the latter, Strupp’s Media Matters piece cited a high-profile sample:
The New York Times editorial board speculated that it “appears to be the product of an overzealous prosecution.” Liberal New York magazine reporter Jonathan Chait labeled the indictment “unbelievably ridiculous.” A USA Today editorial dubbed it a “flimsy indictment,” while The Wall Street Journal called it “prosecutorial abuse for partisan purposes.”
But Strupp also talked with a number of Texas journalists who painted a very different picture, including Jeff Cohen, of the Houston Chronicle, and Keven Ann Willey, of the Dallas Morning News, the state’s two largest dailies, both of which have editorialized in support of seeing the investigation proceed:
The Chronicle wrote that the indictments “suggest that the longest-serving governor in Texas history has grown too accustomed to getting his way when it comes to making sure that virtually every key position in state government is occupied by a Perry loyalist.” The Morning News editorial board stated: “It’s in every Texan’s best interests for the charges against Perry, whatever your view of them, to traverse the entire judicial system as impartially as possible.”
Strupp also spoke with Morning News columnist Wayne Slater: “Many reporters in Texas know Perry and are much more familiar with the details in this case, the fact that these are Republicans investigating this and that Perry has a history of hardball politics in forcing people out,” Slater said. “This is a much more nuanced story than some in the Beltway understand.”
Indeed, a recent post by Slater, “Why the conventional wisdom in the Rick Perry indictment story might be incomplete,” led early Perry defender David Axelrod to tweet that it was “worth reading” notwithstanding his first impressions.
Key points that Slater and others (including Rachel Maddow, in an Aug. 26 installment of “Debunction Junction”) have raised include:
1)  The indictment was not brought by the Tavis County DA. Nor were any other Democrats involved. It’s worth quoting at length from Smith at the Texas Tribune:
Not a single Democratic official was involved at any point in the process, except to recuse him or herself. That’s what the victim of Perry’s “offers,” Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, did. So did District Judge Julie Kocurek.
Kocurek referred the criminal complaint to Judge Billy Ray Stubblefield, a Republican and Perry appointee. Stubblefield could have dismissed the complaint. Instead, he assigned it to Judge Bert Richardson, also a Republican. He, too, could have dismissed the complaint. Instead, he appointed conservative, well-respected former federal prosecutor McCrum as special prosecutor. Republican U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison once recommended McCrum for the job of U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas. McCrum could have dismissed the complaint. Instead, he took it to a grand jury.
2)  The indictment is not an attack on the governor’s right to veto, any more than a bribery charge would be, if Perry were accused of having vetoed a bill in return for a bribe. As Rachel Maddow put it, covering the story the day it broke, “You may have the constitutional right to vote, for example; you don’t have the constitutional right to sell your vote.”
3)  Perry’s purported motivation — outrage over Lehmberg’s DWI violation and conviction — was not matched in two other cases where GOP district attorneys were convicted. Nor has he offered any rational explanation why a DWI violation — particularly after rehab — should be seen as so uniquely heinous. Another key Perry talking point has been that “In Texas we settle things with elections.” Why not this time, then?
4)  Perry did have a prima facie political motivation to go after Lehmberg: Her office was investigating corruption involving Perry cronies at the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas at the time he sought to force her out, and replace her with his own appointee.
5)  The indictment of Perry is not about the “criminalization of politics” — a rhetorical framework that dates back to at least Richard Nixon. As Smith told Salon:
The very term is profoundly disturbing because its real meaning is, “We are the law so it is logically impossible for us to violate it.” Political insiders — from politicians to those who work or used to work for them — know full well that politics now is little more than institutionalized bribery. How do even well-meaning players cope with that psychologically? They have to set their/our political practices outside the reach of the law.
A good parallel is seen in popular culture presentations of Mob life, in which the wives, sons, daughters of mobsters are willfully blind to the source of their wealth. Anyone who wants to turn on the lights becomes a snitch who wants to “criminalize” their everyday lives.
Of course, none of the above proves that Perry necessarily was guilty. That’s what trials are for. But it does tell us that Perry’s media defense has no relation to known facts, so why should he get the benefit of the doubt in matters where the facts remain unclear? Why shouldn’t a press, whose job it is to be skeptical and hold the powerful accountable, look at Perry like any other politician charged with a crime?  Why is there such a gap between the national media and the Texas press?
Strupp isn’t sure. He only knows the gap is there. “I don’t know if this is just laziness on the part of the national press side, or, as one person put it to me, ‘a rush to judgment,’ because they want to make it a political story more than possibly a criminal story, but there’s definitely a divide, and it seems like the mistake is being made at the national level, because they are not looking at the facts enough.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has reached the same conclusion. Maddow, you’ll recall, was one of the first to pay attention to Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s money scandals, which now have him standing trial. She was also ahead of the curve in national coverage of Bridgegate. In these and other stories Maddow gave on-air credit to local reporters for bringing the stories to light, and for sticking with them in the face of pushback, so it was hardly surprising that she took the same line in discussing the Perry indictments and how they were being treated.
First off, Maddow set up the out-of-state/in-state divide in a familiar, clear-cut manner (video/transcript):
Rick Perry thinks the felony indictment thing is no barrier to running for president right now. The national media, including the Beltway media, conservative media, and much of the liberal media as well has settled on common wisdom now that the indictment really isn’t that big a deal for Rick Perry, that it will have no problem beating the charges. Maybe it will even help him run for president somehow.
But you know what, in Texas the grand jury that indicted him is pushing back on that now, pushing back on it hard saying they took their responsibilities seriously and these indictments indicate a serious and solid case against governor. Texas papers like the Dallas Morning News are editorializing, hey, not so fast, this case is for real, it deserves a real hearing.
In the segment, Maddow interviewed Wayne Slater, discussing some of the major misconceptions floating around, and in conclusion she reemphasized the importance of local reporting in no uncertain terms:
MADDOW: I will say — as people look at Rick Perry as a potential 2016 contender. You know, he’s taking this New Hampshire trip tomorrow, people talk about this indictment. If you’re thinking about looking at whether or not Rick Perry is a viable 2016 contender and thinking about looking at these indictments as part of that, get behind the pay wall, right? Pay for subscriptions to the Texas publication of your choice. Start reading Texas papers on this. The coverage is like reading it from Mars when you compare stuff that`s being written in Washington.
Fascinating.
The main point that both Strupp and Maddow were making is neither a new nor an original one. Most of the local reporters in Texas would echo it, and local reporters have most likely been saying as much since the East Eden Times filed its first reports on the Fall. (“Apples?  There weren’t any apples. They were pomegranates!”) But the specific dynamics of today’s media require a bit more precision, and that precision was provided by the Atlantic’s James Fallows in his 1996 book, “Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy.” As I read him, he was describing precisely this same sort of disconnect, between the painstaking, locally grounded, fact-based foundations of journalism, and much more facile, simplified, conflict-centered conventions of corporate journalism in our time, which have proven both less costly to produce, and more lucrative in attracting an audience. So I contacted Fallows to ask if he thought this was an accurate description of what was going on in this instance.
“I used to live in Austin and was aware of some of the twist and turns of the local politics there,” Fallows said.  “I haven’t myself followed enough of the local coverage to know exactly what’s going on, but your basic premise I certainly agree with. And actually, it’s a fact that because,precisely because, most national reporters would not have covered, would not be familiar with these kinds of Texas angles, you fit it into the only bed that you as Procrustes have—‘What does this mean for the next election?’ Because there is no development you can’t fit into that plot line.”
Given the much wider background of gubernatorial corruption and scandal that I reported on recently, there was another master narrative available, I pointed out, and Fallows concurred, then dug deeper into why campaign narrative held such appeal. “I agree. It’s a really interesting point,” he said.  “I think the reason that people would generally just be drawn to the campaign narrative theme is you can’t be proven wrong,” since it’s always framed in terms of an ongoing flux. “It’s like sports talk radio,” Fallows added. “There is not any way that you can ever get in trouble for any of that, so it’s the kind of natural thing you want to talk about, and you can’t be wrong. So that’s my cynical interpretation.”
There is, however, another dimension to this story: the reaction of the Democratic establishment.  Writing here at Salon on Aug. 25, Michael Lind presented the situation as follows:
The indictment of Rick Perry on felony charges by a Texas grand jury has revealed a split among left-of-center Americans, dividing progressives and Democrats who think the indictment is dubious or worse from others who defend it.  The first category includes the New York Times editorial board, Clinton adviser David Axelrod, progressive punditsJonathan Chait and Matthew Yglesias, Ian Millhiser at the Center for American Progress,Alan Dershowitz and many others, along with yours truly.
Prominent center-left individuals who support the indictment are … well, they aren’t easy to find.  To be sure, there are lots of hyperpartisan trolls who hide their identities behind juvenile screen names in comments sections and accuse those of us on the center-left who have raised doubts about the indictment of being shills for Rick Perry or secret conservatives….
Lind seems to have missed Rachel Maddow. He’s also missed the fact that the Democratic establishment has been horribly wrong before, also with criticism being led by “hyperpartisan trolls.” Remember the Iraq War? Endorsed in Senate votes by John Kerry and Hillary Clinton?
Given this relatively recent history, it’s a very odd way to begin laying out his argument. In response to the argument that Republicans were intimately involved in the process that led to Perry’s indictment, Lind purports to show how the Whitewater investigation can be similarly portrayed as nonpartisan. This is not an argument about facts, but about appearances — or at least potential appearances.
Lind does have a very valid point buried in his article: Getting Perry indicted is not a magic bullet for turning Texas blue. But who ever said that it was? After all, everyone knows that Perry’s already leaving office.  Lind links this with a much less impressive point — that it will only embolden Republicans to bring trumped-up charges against Democratic governors.  This would be an excellent point, if Republican operatives had time machines. How else to explain their successful 2006 conviction of Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, which a bipartisan group of over 100 former attorney generals argued against in a recent Supreme Court amicus brief?
In the broader sense, Lind is on to something — as Yale law professor Jack Balkin argued in a 1995 paper, populism and progressivism can be seen as broad traditions, encompassing fundamental visions of what democracy means, giving direction to constitutional interpretations, and profoundly influencing our sense of what it means to be an American citizen.  At one point, Balkin wrote:
[I]mplicit in the progressivist diagnosis and the progressivist framing of issues is a nascent distrust and critique of popular culture coupled with a call for the state to remedy or at least counteract its deficiencies.
To the extent that Lind, in turn, distrusts this distrust, he and I are on the same side. The fight against corruption has always been one of the hallmarks of progressivism, and those fighting corruption in Texas have discernible roots in that tradition — as one can glean from his article — while Lind’s roots lie with populism. So, if what he’s really arguing for is a renewed primacy of populist concerns, then I would stand with him, especially in Texas.
But populists also have an anti-corruption tradition of their own, so I’m not at all sure there’s a sensible necessary connection here. Moreover, since one of Lind’s greatest concerns is how Republicans can co-opt anti-corruption prosecution strategies, he must also acknowledge how thoroughly right-wing co-optations of populism have already succeeded, both in Texas, and all across America.
Which is why it really is best to keep focused on the facts. Let’s hear them first; only then can we have informed opinions.
Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News, and a columnist for Al Jazeera English

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Frederick Douglass Establishes Sound First Principle

September 13, 2014, 10:16 am
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John Adams On Morality, Religion And America's Constitutional Government

September 13, 2014, 10:38 am
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Treaty of Tripoli

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  • Pax on both houses: Deism And Founding Father Links

    paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../deism-and-founding-father-links.html
    Jun 16, 2014 - NPR: Deist Founders Claimed Subversive Right To 'Nature's God,'" Not Christian ..... Nonchalant Father Catches Home-Run Ball While Hold.

  • Pax on both houses: NPR: Deist Founders Claimed ...

    paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../npr-founders-claimed-subversive-righ...
    Jul 14, 2014 - NPR: Deist Founders Claimed Subversive Right To 'Nature's God,'" Not Christian ... The founding fathers were all at least nominally Christian.

  • Pax on both houses: The Founding Of America; Christianity ...

    paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../patrick-henry-founding-of-america.ht...
    Mar 9, 2014 - http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-thomas-jefferson-created-his-own-bible-5659505/?no-ist *** Deism and The Founding ...

    • ↧
    Search

    The Best Posts From Pax On Both Houses

    September 13, 2014, 11:18 am
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    "Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"

    "Pope Francis Links"

    "Gun Cartoons and Gun Violence Bibliography"

    "Plutocracy Triumphant"
    Cartoon Compendium


    G.K. Chesterton: "The Anarchy of The Rich"

    G.K. Chesterton and Warren Buffett's Class War

    G.K. Chesterton On Charity, Hope And Universal Salvation

    G.K. Chesterton Quotations... And More

    "Mormonism Is Not A Christian Religion. 
    Founding Prophet Joseph Smith Was A Sex Pervert"

    "Bad Black People." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right"

    "The Death of Epistemology"

    "Republicans for Revolution," A Study In Anarchic Apocalypticism
    http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/republicans-for-revolution-study-in.html

    ***

    Alan: By "Best Posts" I refer to writings that lead most directly to the realization that 
    "the emperor has no clothes."

    "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" ... except insofar as it is Oz' purpose to perpetuate a top-down, dominance-submission, socio-economic hierarchy that began in Yertle the Turtle's primeval swamp and now manifests most egregiously as the unacknowledged class war waged by American plutocrats. 

    That said:

    Inline image 1

    ***

    "Yertle the Turtle"
    Dr. Seuss
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yertle_the_Turtle_and_Other_Stories

    Video Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FFfbSWbLWw

    Text: http://www.spunk.org/texts/prose/sp000212.txt

    ***

    The essence of Yertle derives from the extraordinary Grimm Brothers' Fairy Tale, "
    The Fisherman And His Wife."
    http://www.authorama.com/grimms-fairy-tales-10.html





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    "Free Market" Logging Quadruple Homicide In Peruvian Amazon

    September 13, 2014, 12:14 pm
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    Traveling up Mishansho River. Overland to illegal logging operation near Mashonsho river. Illegal logging. Cutting copaiba trees. To other illegal camp - operation run by El Gato. Loggers in camp. (Campamiento de Maquia.) Confrontation between El Gato and Asheninka Indians -- conversation (Edwin Chota in conversation.) David Salisbury (activist academic) also. El Gato and his team of loggers were traveling towards the Brazilian border when confronted by the Asheninka. The ultimate outcome of the confrontation remains unclear. Asheninka with peccary killed in the forest.
    Edwin Chota pauses while on a mission to overtake and expel an illegal logging crew from his community's land claim in the headwaters of the Alto Tamaya River, near Peru's border with Brazil.

    Quadruple Homicide in Peruvian Amazon Puts Criminal Logging in Spotlight

    Peru's president announces investigation into murder of a community leader who foretold his own killing by criminal loggers.

    Scott Wallace
    for National Geographic
    PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 11, 2014
    PUCALLPA, Peru—Tribal people in a remote headwaters region in the Peruvian Amazon are reacting with defiance and despair to the recent brutal murders of four community leaders who were ambushed on a jungle trail near the border with Brazil.
    Among those slain last week was Edwin Chota Valero, 54, the president of the Ashéninka indigenous settlement of Saweto.
    Chota was a charismatic activist who opposed drug traffickers and criminal timber syndicates that have come to operate with a sense of near-total impunity across broad swaths of Peru's isolated borderlands.
    Three of the victims' widows, along with eight of their younger children, arrived in the Amazonian timber hub of Pucallpa on Monday night after traveling three days and nights from Saweto by motorized dugout canoe.
    Upon their arrival, the women demanded that the government act immediately to retrieve the bodies of their husbands and provide security for Saweto's remaining residents, who remain under grave threat from loggers and other criminal elements still lurking in the surrounding forests.
    "We want the bodies of our husbands that have been left out in the jungle as though they were animals," says Ergilia López, speaking via Skype from the Pucallpa offices of ProPurús, an NGO that has been assisting the residents of Saweto to gain legal title to their land.
    López is the widow of community treasurer Jorge Ríos Pérez, who was also murdered in the ambush. Slumped in a chair beside López was Julia Pérez, Edwin Chota's widow, who gave birth to the couple's first child last year and is seven months pregnant with another. The other two victims have been identified by police as Saweto community members Leoncio Quinticima and Francisco Pinedo.
    Photo of Alto Purus River.
    Amid flying wood chips and sawdust, a chain saw operator lays into a mahogany tree in an indigenous community logging tract along the Alto Purús River.
    PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX WEBB, MAGNUM PHOTOS
    Renewed Call for Land Titles
    Evidently fatigued and distraught as she sat among the children in the ProPurús office, López called on the government to move swiftly to complete the land titling process for Saweto.
    As revulsion over the quadruple homicide continues to grow around the world, Peruvian president Ollanta Humala announced on September 10that authorities would travel to the scene in an effort to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice for a crime he characterized as "barbaric."
    For the past ten years, Chota had been petitioning the Ucayali regional government in Pucallpa to gain legal title for Saweto, a 275-square-mile (712-square-kilometer) headwaters region in the upper reaches of the Alto Tamaya River. Chota saw titling as a fundamental step toward expunging the plague of illegal loggers who pillage Saweto's forests and drug traffickers who move coca paste across the porous border into Brazil.
    They threaten us. They intimidate. They have the guns.
    "As long as we don't have title, the loggers don't respect native ownership," Chota told me three years ago as I traveled with him by dugout canoe through the rugged forests while on assignment for National Geographic magazine.
    A wiry man with unruly jet-black hair and a winsome, gap-toothed smile, Chota had a gift for motivating his people to persevere despite the evident risks. "They threaten us. They intimidate. They have the guns."
    The Law of the Gun
    With a sweep of the hand, he had gestured out to the surrounding forests for hundreds of miles in all directions. "Welcome to the land without law," he told me. "The only law here is the law of the gun."
    Chota made it his business to confront logging crews that came upriver from Pucallpa to cut timber illegally within the boundaries of Saweto's land claim. He doggedly pursued his vision to create an ecological reserve where his people could live sustainably amid the bounty afforded by the forested hollows and emerald-green creeks of the township. As his activism intensified, so too did the threats on his life.
    Last year, as I reported on NationalGeographic.com, he led police to a sawmill outside Pucallpa on the banks of the Ucayali River, where piles of raw timber illegally harvested in Saweto awaited milling.
    Photo of worringing logs ashore .
    A worker on the banks of the Ucayali River outside Pucallpa helps haul a log to shore.
    PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX WEBB, MAGNUM PHOTOS
    "Someone Is Going to Die"
    After agents impounded the ill-gotten timber, Chota and treasurer Ríos testified that they were singled out by well-connected logging bosses, who warned that "someone from Saweto is going to die."
    "The timber and the loggers are now under investigation," Chota wrote at the time. "But who will protect the people of Saweto and their leaders from the armed and dangerous loggers?"
    His words seemed to presage the death that awaited him. His repeated pleas for security and a government presence on the Alto Tamaya fell on deaf ears.
    Chota and his fellow villagers were killed on September 1—the day after they left Saweto bound for Apiwtxa, an Ashéninka community across the border in Brazil, a two-day hike away along jungle footpaths.
    According to Ergilia López, when the men failed to appear in Apiwtxa, their comrades doubled back and discovered the decomposing bodies. Word of the killings seeped out five days later from Saweto, which is linked to the outside world only by a faltering two-way radio.
    David Salisbury, a University of Richmond geography professor and longtime adviser to the community, says the loggers in the surrounding forests are continuing to wage a campaign of terror against the Ashéninka of Saweto, even since the murders.
    "They're threatening to kill everyone," he says.
    Salisbury believes that timber and drug mafias had come to see the land titling process in Saweto, which has gained momentum in recent months, as an obstacle to their operations.
    Photo of a tug boat on the Ucayali River.
    A tug on the Ucayali River churns past downtown Pucallpa to deliver logs to one of the port's dozens of sawmills. The booming timber port is strategically situated at the intersection of this major Amazon tributary and a highway that allows trucks to carry lumber across the Andes to the Pacific coast.
    PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX WEBB, MAGNUM PHOTOS
    "No Going Back"
    "These murders have exposed the collusion between the drug traffickers and the loggers," he says. "The people of Saweto were an impediment to both."
    If the assailants hoped the deaths would drive the remaining residents from Saweto, they may be disappointed.
    "I'm going to keep fighting till the end, until they kill me too," Ergilia López says. "You have to keep going. There's no going back. They have no understanding of the forest. All they do is destroy. They know nothing. I am not afraid of them."
    Still, without some kind of protection from the authorities, remaining community members are in extreme peril.
    "Everyone in Saweto is in danger," Salisbury says.
    They have no understanding of the forest. All they do is destroy.
    Frustrated with Peru's slow response, the Ashéninkas' Brazilian relatives from Apiwtxa dispatched their own team of 16 tribal members, which arrived at the crime scene yesterday, according to the community's blog.
    The team identified the body of Jorge Ríos, who appeared to have been shot in the base of the neck, and the belongings of the others, including Edwin Chota's backpack.
    It's not clear where the bodies of the other victims have gone, but heavy rains in recent days may have washed them away, according to the posting. The team intends to remain on the site until Peruvian authorities conduct forensic investigations and provide security for the residents of Saweto.
    Besides his wife, Julia Pérez, and their growing family, Chota leaves behind a seven-year-old son, Kitoniro, from a previous marriage. He doted on Kitoniro during my visit, carrying him around the village everywhere he went.
    Scott Wallace, a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado-Boulder, wrote about Edwin Chota and illegal logging in Peru in the April 2013 issue of National Geographic. He is the author of The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes.

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    Ben Franklin On A Worthwhile Life

    September 13, 2014, 12:19 pm
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    Ben Franklin
    Wikiquote
    http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

    ***

    Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris: On Taxes

    25 December, 1783

    "The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law. All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."
    http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html 

    ***

    "Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
    http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html



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    Mark Twain: "Never Argue With Stupid People"

    September 13, 2014, 8:01 pm
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    George Carlin On The Accumulation Of Material Goods

    September 13, 2014, 8:05 pm
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    The upshot?


    "Americans are fucked. They've been bought off. And they come real cheap: a few million dirt bikes, camcorders, microwaves, cordless phones, digital watches, answering machines, jet skis and sneakers with lights in 'em. You say you want a few items back from the Bill of Rights? Just promise the doofuses new gizmos." George Carlin

    "Shopping and buying - and getting and having - comprise the Great American Addiction. No one is immune. When the underclass riots in this country, they don't kill policemen and politicians, they steal merchandise. How embarrassing." George Carlin

    "There is just enough bullshit to hold things together in this country. Bullshit is the glue, that binds us as a nation. Where would we be without our safe, familiar, American bullshit? Land of the free, home of the brave, the American dream, all men are equal, justice is blind, the press is free, your vote counts, business is honest, the good guys win, the police are on your side, god is watching you, your standard of living will never decline… and everything is going to be just fine— The official national bullshit story. I call it the American okie doke. Every one, every one of those items is provably untrue at one level or another, but we believe them because they're pounded into our heads from the time we're children. That's what they do with that kind of thing—pound it into the heads of kids, ‘cause they know the children are much too young to be able to muster an intellectual defense against a sophisticated idea like that, and they know that up to a certain age children believe everything their parents tell them. And as a result, they never learn to question things. Nobody questions things in this country anymore. Nobody questions it—everybody is too fat and happy. Everybody's got a cell phone that'll make pancakes and rub their balls now— Way too fucking prosperous for our own good. Way too fucking prosperous, Americans have been bought off and silenced by toys and gizmos. And no one learns to question things."
    George Carlin


    ***

    "The American Dream"
    Video
    (Foul-mouthed but brilliant.)

    "We Like War"
    Video
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