When You've Blogged as Long as I Have... (a look back at my blogging)

I've been blogging since about 1998ish.  That was just before the word "blog" was even a thing.  In those early days, we didn't have organized blogging tools.  Blogger.com and LiveJournal wouldn't go live for another year, and Wordpress wouldn't start up for another five, but I was doing weekly updates of a web page I had laid out like the front page of a newspaper.  That web page was called "The Bitch Page" and every week, I would update it with my commentary on things that I felt needed more attention.  On April 13, 1998, I wrote this:

What is up with Titanic commercials?? The movie JUST got knocked out of first place in the US (by Lost In Space) after 15 weeks and they have the GALL to run Television Adverts telling us to "see it again". Talk about evil. Like the 3 BILLION they already have in ticket sales is not enough? TALK about GREED!!

Awww, I were so innocent back then!  Of course, this was before the smartphone, before even the iPod, before 9/11, and right on top of the Monica Lewinksky Scandal.  There was plenty to complain about but the most important stuff, I had no idea about.  I was starting to wake up, however.  I had started dating my eventual wife and had met my wife's step-mother who was a voracious reader.  She gave me some books to read.  Books about Freemasonry that, 4 years later, would inspire my novel series TheKey Chronicle (get Book 1 on Amazon!).

And then came GuerrillaNews.com.  Or, rather, then I came to GuerrillaNews.com...

I've been blogging since about 1998ish.  That was just before the word "blog" was even a thing.  In those early days, we didn't have organized blogging tools.  Blogger.com and LiveJournal wouldn't go live for another year, and Wordpress wouldn't start up for another five, but I was doing weekly updates of a web page I had laid out like the front page of a newspaper.  That web page was called "The Bitch Page" and every week, I would update it with my commentary on things that I felt needed more attention.  On April 13, 1998, I wrote this:

What is up with Titanic commercials?? The movie JUST got knocked out of first place in the US (by Lost In Space) after 15 weeks and they have the GALL to run Television Adverts telling us to "see it again". Talk about evil. Like the 3 BILLION they already have in ticket sales is not enough? TALK about GREED!!

Awww, I were so innocent back then!  Of course, this was before the smartphone, before even the iPod, before 9/11, and right on top of the Monica Lewinksky Scandal.  There was plenty to complain about but the most important stuff, I had no idea about.  I was starting to wake up, however.  I had started dating my eventual wife and had met my wife's step-mother who was a voracious reader.  She gave me some books to read.  Books about Freemasonry that, 4 years later, would inspire my novel series TheKey Chronicle (get Book 1 on Amazon!.

And then came GuerrillaNews.com!  Or, rather, then I came to GuerrillaNews.com!

While doing further research for this series I came across a website called GuerrillaNews.com.  It was an edgy, alternative news source that covered stuff that the mainstream news wasn't covering.  This was very much in line with my old efforts on "The Bitch Page" so I took to it immediately.  GNN, as we called it, had a thriving user forum and, man, did I spend a ton of time on there!  Both learning and helping others to learn about current politics, history and culture, that forum changed my world view more than a few times.

Sadly, there was a point when GNN got too big for its old, slow servers, so the founders decided to do something about it.  However, rather than simply upgrading the servers, they decided to create a whole new GNN site.  They hired big-time professional web site designers and the new site ended up looking utilitarian, industrial, and unintuitive.  Sure, the original site was positively web -1.0, but at least it made sense to us.  The new site was abstract and had features that were questionably necessary like blogs.  I guess the idea was that, rather than blogging on our own sites, we should blog on GNN.  I'm still not sure why anyone thought this was a good idea, but I just happy to see a faster server being implemented.

So, when one of the founders, who was interested in maintaining the old community on the new site, invited me and a few others to check out the beta site before everyone else, I was super excited.  Obviously, when I checked it out, I was a little concerned at how unfriendly it all looked.  The design was the web site equivalent to a German expressionistic film.  However I wanted to be supportive.  As I recall, I politely expressed concerns but ultimately felt that we users would get used to it.

The site went live and suddenly, I and the group of friends that had been invited to the beta with me, stopped hearing from the founders at all.  Our growing concerns about usability were being ignored and when I asked about resetting my password (of all things), I was told that there was no way but it would be added at some point.  This compounded with some concerns that some of the stories GNN had posted were taken down as to not offend the web designers (who had big big corporate clients) made me concerned for the future of GNN--a concern that would prove itself justified.

One of My Favorite Blog Posts

Before all that played out, and before I had lost my password, I did give one more thing on the site a try--their blogging system.  I think I felt that if the interface and server-side software worked better than what I was using at the time, maybe my GNN blog could replace my actual blog (I was using Grey Matter back then).  I had been tossing around an idea for a blog post that would put today's problems in the context of the Founding Fathers.  So, I wrote it and it ended up being one of my favorite things I've written for a blog.  I recently came across it and found it to be still quite topical (though not as good as I remember it).  Here is my first and only post for my blog on the "new" GNN,  which has never appeared on any version of thepete.com.  It was written on October 19, 2004:

L, L, and the P of H

B00038 Tue, 19 Oct 2004 05:56:59 -0500

It’s my theory that “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” is by far the most successful propaganda slogan ever devised. Of course, you’re probably having one of two reactions to that statement.

1) Of course it was propaganda you idiot!

2) Wow, that’s pretty cynical, don’t you think?

What’s so funny is that neither reaction really applies to where I’m coming from. See, the idea is not that the founding fathers were bullshit artists or that they were PR agents hired by the real founding fathers who remain obscured by history to this day. My theory is that they actually did think that what they were doing was the right thing.
They also understood that some people wouldn’t think they were doing the right thing.

The thing is, they weren’t doing the right thing.

Like the Republicans of today, the Founding Fathers may have used phrases like “Give me liberty or give me death.” and “L, L, and the P of H” as a way to con everyone into thinking what they were trying to do would benefit all of them. The catch is, they knew it wouldn’t. The catch is, they knew the average citizen would be completely unable to deal with the kind of power the Founding Fathers were creating for themselves.

The same way many of us couldn’t stop King George from going to war, individual citizens of the mini-countries that would become states couldn’t stop most of themselves from becoming swayed by the DVDs, fast cars and 1200 TV channels of their day—the abstract concept of freedom.

Freedom to farm the way you wanted to farm, freedom to sell what you wanted to sell, and freedom to own who you wanted to own. Of course, the reality, according to my theory, was probably darker. What the founding fathers really wanted was freedom to victimize, freedom to take advantage of, freedom to lie.

Ever notice how lying in general isn’t a crime? Sure, committing fraud is, but that’s a really huge lie. Little white lies, like telling people your drug will make you feel like your wind-surfing across a field of wheat are fine, apparently. The Founding Fathers wanted to create a place where “Caveat Emptor” or “buyer beware” was the perpetual rule of thumb.

Too bad they didn’t mention it to the first Americans when they were selling those poor saps on the whole “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” line…

Yeah, yeah, that’s what America stands for, I’ll believe that when WMD show up in Iraq!

Wait… no I won’t.

Apparently, I wasn't that into proofreading back then.  The point of the post, is clear enough, though.  Our country was never supposed to be "the Land of the Free."  How could it be when it allowed slavery to be legal?  No, the real plan here was that America was going to become a capitalist machine that would print money for whomever controled it.  Remember, back in the days of the FF, they didn't really mean "all men are created equal" they just meant all white men who owned land.  Those were, after all, the only people who could actually vote.  No women, no People of Color, no one with renters insurance.  I'm kidding. I don't think that was a thing back then.

The point is, where we are at now is where we've been going since 1776.  A country where banks are too big to fail, government doesn't listen to the people and the 1% controls everything, may not have been on their radar, but this path--the path that would exploit the vast majority of Americans in ways most of us were too uneducated to understand, was laid down by those same Founding Fathers.  They were the real originators of the pyramid scheme.  After all, what else is the capitalist system than a way for the many to give most of their money to the few?

By definition, our system is a pyramid scheme.

Sure, we may get some kind of compensation, like a product or a service, but is that really worth the money we spent when the company we paid it to made insane profits on it?  I found one source who claims profits on a cup of coffee can be 400-500%.  So, yeah, America is a pyramid scheme.  What's worse is that the tiny number of people who have most of America's money can easily influence or even control the laws that regulate that pyramid scheme.

It's pretty obvious that the real reason the Colonies revolted against King George was NOT because of the taxation without represention--not exactly.  It was really because they wanted to control the workings of the government, themselves.  Think about it--a government for the people, by the people, when "people" are only land-owning white men?  Yeah, that's a good deal for those dudes and that's the system they created.  A kind of revolving door that would allow them to step into government and out again, as they generally saw fit.

And guess what--that revolving door still exists today.

What ever happened to GuerrillaNews.com?

I'm not sure why exactly, but GNN did shut down for a while--I think it was about 2007 or 2008.  I think the community had fallen apart (I had left because of those concerns about GNN's future--why invest in a site if management was clearly going to screw it up?) and when I would return just to see how things were, there were always absurdly petty arguments dominating the conversations on the forums.  It was sad.  All of my friends had left, as well, so there was no reason to stick around.

For a while there was a "GNN WILL RETURN" message but a real site wouldn't appear at that URL again until 2013, when someone controlling the domain tried to reboot the site with an article-posting system.  Anyone who signs up can post articles they think are relevant to GuerrillaNews.com readers.  Sadly, the site never got any momentum and it looks like the most recent article posted was in December of 2013.

They never did add a "reset password" feature.  I'm just glad I could get my old post back via the Way Back Machine at Archive.org, though.  You can see what GuerrillaNews.com looked like back when it was great and what it became after the redesign and here is what my only blog post looked like in context of the "new" GNN.

One thing that was nice was that during one of my return visits to see if a password reset link had been added, I came across a couple of comments on my single blog post:

why is this guy an unknown?

-ledriffs @ 11/17/05 13:50:05

he’s not unknown.
He runs another website and isn’t active here anymore – see thepete.com

-sisyphus @ 11/17/05 14:39:26

So, that was nice.  I felt, at least, a little missed.

Outside of GNN, I was busy

By 2004, I built a reasonable audience during my coverage of Kerry/Edwards vs. Bush/Cheney.  I still remember slumping down in front of my TV after following the election all night.  I was gobsmacked at how easily Kerry had given in.  There was SO much evidence of a rigged election but no one wanted to dig into it on the legal side.

In 2008, I blogged heavily about Obama vs. McCain election and that had a much happier ending.  Not only did we get a black man in the White House, I managed to get my blog mentioned on CSPAN and found myself with an even bigger audience and quite a few new actual friends.

However, after Obama proved that he could be as corrupt as any white guy, I got pretty disillusioned.  I mean, I knew he'd let me down, but his health care "reform" was really just a baby step that forced a ton of new customers on the insurance industry--at tax payer expense.  Then, the Drone Wars really surprised me.  I mean, Obama has killed a lot of people with these flying killer robots, some of them American citizens.  I think the number is up to 4 Americans killed by drones.  Some of them were deemed "terrorists" by the USG, which apparently meant they were no longer human and were therefore unworthy of the same rights as other humans.  Those rights that are guaranteed to us in the US Constitution.  This guy is a former Constitutional Law professor.

Then there is Gitmo still being open.  And his well-deserved nickname the "Deporter-in-Chief."  We also can't forget his treatment of whistleblowers.  There's a reason Snowden still lives in Russia.

I mean, what kind of country do we live in where it's illegal to expose crime?

So, yeah, I've seen a lot.  And seeing how Obama failed to bring the kind of change we all wanted, I decided to retool my efforts online.  I stopped posting several long form blog posts a week.  I just didn't have the heart for it anymore.  I started taking a lot of photos and realized that Instagram was a super easy platform to use for posting quickly and easily.  Via IFTTT.com, I have my Instagram posts automatically cross-posted to my blog.  It makes blogging simple, short posts, very easy.  It has allowed me to get back to living my life and sharing the interesting bits with anyone who is interested.  It's actually pretty great.  I get anywhere from a couple hundred to almost a thousand hits per day.

That's not to say I've given up on "serious" blogging.  Thanks to the art of "screenshotting" I can find headlines and even news stories, take screengrabs of them and post them to my Instagram feed, along with a couple of sentences of cogent commentary and voila, I can still blog about serious things while not being forced to spend all day on a piece.  Just today, along with a screenshot from my smart watch, I posted about how the Supreme Court effectively banned protesting outside the Supreme Court.  Yeah.  Tax-payer-funded building now does not allow tax-payers to protest outside of it.

However, life has gotten pretty scary in recent years.  A black president seems to have pulled racism into focus for Americans and we can now see with stark clarity how racist our society still is.  Sure, cops are dicks to everyone but when's the last time you heard a cop describe a white guys like this "he looked like a demon."

That's how Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson described Mike Brown looking before Wilson shot this unarmed black man and left him, dead on the street.

Pardon my french, but that's fucked up.

Oh yeah and EVIL is not really a thing.

So, not only do you have a cop murdering someone who was not a threat, but you have the cop seeing a black guy as a mythical being.  A police officer with a gun was that scared of a black guy with no weapon.  That is some deep deep racism, and worse, a serious belief in the supernatural.

I know it's not like believing in ghosts or ESP, but it's still an idea in a concept that can't be proven or measured.  Once you believe in a concept like that, you can see it in anyone you want.  People like to call Hitler a "monster" or say that he was evil.  But he wasn't a monster or evil.  He was horribly corrupt is all.  Hitler was every bit as human as you or me.  And that's the danger of believing in a concept like "evil".  It gives you license to do pretty much anything because you've gone from a regular person to a fighter of evil.  Darren Wilson lost his job, but he's still a free man.  You lose your job because you screwed up your job.  You go to prison when you kill someone.  Even when there is no loss of life, I still worry--like when a US Marine described a terrorist on a train in France as having evil in his eyes.  I have to admit, I have no idea what evil eyes would look like.

Then there is the California drought situation (which I blogged about recently).  I may not be a Californian anymore, but it's still an important state (and I still have family there).  There's also the whistleblower situation where Snowden is in exile, Manning is in prison, and Drake and others are still not being listened to.  I'm also worried about American infrastructure.  On the tenth anniversary of Katrina, and coming up on the third anniversary of Sandy, not to mention the hundreds of wild fires all around western America, I wonder how well prepared America is to deal with extreme weather.

So, yeah, there's plenty to long-form blog about still.  I'll probably be cross-posting my long form posts over at Medium.  What that means is that if you're tired of looking at photos on my blog, you can go to medium.com/@thepete and read just my long stuff.

Regardless, please let me know what you think.  Being a one-man operation, it's great to get opinions from other folks.  Please comment below my posts or just Tweet at me.

I do miss that forum on GNN, tho.

I think a site like that would be of immense use to a concerned populace.

Good news! No fast-track for Obama and the #TPP/#TransPacificPartnership! Now at least the Senate & House will get to debate it, I think. The whole text of the TPP needs to be public. Period.

Good news! No fast-track for Obama and the #TPP/#TransPacificPartnership! Now at least the Senate & House will get to debate it, I think. The whole text of the TPP needs to be public. Period.

A photo posted by Mr The Pete (@mrthepete) on May 12, 2015 at 12:57pm PDT

ObamaWatch: Obama Admin Considering Indefinite Jailing for Terror Suspects #obamawtf

ObamaWatch: Obama Admin Considering Indefinite Jailing for Terror Suspects #obamawtf, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

My sister-in-law, Lisa (she runs OnLisaReinsRadar.com ), Tweeted yesterday about how every day there's something new from the Obama camp that makes her what to ask "WTF?"

I agreed and suggested a daily ObamaWTF Tweet. Here's mine for today, taken from today's DemocracyNow.org headlines:

Obama Considers “Preventive Detention” for Indefinite Jailings

The Obama administration, meanwhile, is reportedly considering a “preventive detention” system that would indefinitely jail terror suspects in the United States without bringing them to trial. The New York Times reports President Obama discussed the proposal at a meeting with human rights advocates at the White House. Two anonymous advocates told the Times that Obama indicated he favored applying the system to future cases, not prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Obama is set to deliver a speech later today outlining his plans on how to deal with closing Guantanamo.

Original here: www.democracynow.org/2009/5/21/headlines#5

This'll be no big deal assuming Obama doesn't do it--but why is he considering this at all? I think there's an amendment in the Bill of Rights promising due process and a speedy trial or something like that.

Dems Debate Whether to Investigate Crimes of Bush Admin or: Why I Refuse Party Affiliation

Dems Debate Whether to Investigate Crimes of Bush Admin or: Why I Refuse Party Affiliation, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

Geh... This is just sad beyond words. WashingtonPost.com is reporting that the Democrats in Washington are torn as to whether or not to go after Bush Admin officials for approving torture.

So, FOR YEARS there have been loads of evidence that the Bush Administration committed crimes. The GAO actually found that they had violated federal law (go to the GAO website and do a search for "covert propaganda"). We all know that acts of torture were committed in Iraq, we know the Bush Admin misled us into war in Iraq and mismanaged our war in Afghanistan.

Yet, no investigation let alone impeachment hearings for any Bushites.

The excuse while Bush was in office was "We can't impeach him now, there just aren't enough votes."

Then, once the Democrats took the majority in Congress, the excuse became "Well, there's not enough time left before Bush steps down."

For anyone who thinks the law should be enforced the last eight years have been very hard.

But it's not getting any easier now. If EVERYTHING ELSE wasn't enough for you, Obama just released memos PROVING Bush officials were down with torture--those of us with morals would THINK we'd finally see some criminal charges.

Maybe we still will--but not before the Democrats debate about WHETHER TO ENFORCE THE LAW.

This is why I refuse to be in either political party. The Democrats are wondering if international and US law needs to be enforced and the Republicans feel the law can go to hell if the cause is just.

The most depressing thing of all is that Obama was supposed to change all of this. Now we see that Democrats and Republicans, alike, believe that the law is to be enforced on the little people and that for the rich (mostly white) folks in government, the law is simply not a concern if one's motives are pure.

I said mostly white, above, because now, apparently, Obama is in violation of the law too--international law demands that war crimminals be prosecuted.

So while I'll never call him "King Barry," Barack Obama is, and will continue to be, above the law until he goes after the Bush Administration.

Progress?

US Gov to Boycott Racism Conference in Rare Show of Honesty

US Gov to Boycott Racism Conference in Rare Show of Honesty, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

Reuters.com reported over the weekend that the US will not be attending a United Nations conference on racism. The reason? Apparently, the declaration the conference wants everyone to sign onto calls Zionism racist.

I don't know about you, but when a single religion/race gets it's own country, I'm thinking that's racist.

Regardless of that, however, it seems pretty ridiculous for the USG to decide that because of this one difference of opinion they're going to boycott the whole thing. For a country founded on the blood of millions of Native Americans, built on the backs of generations of African American slaves, which has exploited cheap immigrant labor from the beginning (and still does to this day) this move by the US seems like a rare example of honesty.

How ironic that we have a black president right now. I suppose it just goes to show you that there is no real difference between the races--a black man can be just as racist as the white guys who came before him.

Or maybe... could this be Classism? After all, the idea here is that we are boycotting the UN conference on racism, thus sacrificing our support of all races in favor of just one--and it's a race (well, religion, really) stereotypically known for controlling wealth (not that I believe this--I just know others do).

I've got nothing against anyone's belief system (believe what you need to in order to get by, I say) but when you use your religious beliefs to harm the rights of others (COUGHpalestineCOUGH) I start to have problems.

Stateside Secretive Prisons for Mostly Muslims (Questionably Guilty, too)

Stateside Secretive Prisons for Mostly Muslims (Questionably Guilty, too), originally uploaded by thepetecom.

Damn, I wish this didn't make me feel so gross. Let me quote from the post on DemocracyNow.org that the included screencap comes from:

While President Obama has pledged to close Guantanamo and the secret overseas CIA prisons, calls are increasing for him to reexamine the treatment of prisoners detained as part of the so-called war on terror being held inside the United States.

With little public scrutiny, the Bush administration opened two secretive prisons in Indiana and Illinois, known as Communication Management Units, or CMUs, that are designed to severely restrict prisoner communication with family members, the media and the outside world. Dozens of Muslim men are still being held at the CMUs, as well as other prisoners, including environmental and animal rights activists.

Man, do we really think America is so weak that it can be threatened by folks fighting Global Warming and trying to free monkeys from labs? No wonder we think Al Qaeda are so bad-ass and killing a bunch of Somali pirates is something to be proud of (come on, they're pirates... from Somalia).

Here's a bit more from the DN transcript:

Prisoners held inside the special unit include Dr. Rafil Dhafir, the Iraqi-born doctor from upstate New York who is serving a twenty-two-year sentence for violating the Iraqi sanctions by sending aid to Iraq through his charity Help the Needy; Yassin Aref, the Kurdish-born imam from Albany, New York, who was convicted in a controversial FBI sting operation; and also the environmental activist Daniel McGowan. He’s serving a seven-year sentence for his role in two acts of arson.

Some critics have suggested McGowan and other non-Muslim prisoners are being held in the CMU, because the federal government wants to avoid accusations that the CMUs are designed to only hold Muslim men.

And from a bit further on lawyer for one of the prisoners of a CMU prison, Kathy Manley says:

Well, yeah, it’s unconstitutional to treat people more restrictively in a prison context because of their race or religion. And they’re clearly doing that. I mean, the CMU in Terre Haute is almost 90 percent Muslim.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: New boss (almost the) same as the old boss.

Obama Administration Lets the Bush Administration Get Away with It

Obama Administration Lets the Bush Administration Get Away with It, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

From the left-capped post on the Obama Administration releasing memos admitting that the Bush administration tortured available now at DemocracyNow.org:

The so-called “torture” memos from the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel were released as part of a lawsuit and freedom of information request filed by the ACLU. Three of the memos were authored by Steven Bradbury in 2005, then a lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel, and one in 2002 by then-head of the office, Jay Bybee.

The memos dispassionately describe the use of tactics such as waterboarding, holding prisoners in small dark boxes, exploiting prisoners’ fears of insects, forced nudity, and shackling and depriving them of sleep for as many as 11 days. They also include extensive legal arguments as to why these tactics do not amount to torture under US and international law.

Also from the post:

President Obama issued a statement calling for ‘reflection not retribution’ and reassured CIA officials that they need not fear prosecution.

I guess this shouldn't be too surprising. In America, if you're rich, a politician (or, let's face it, white), you can get away with anything. The banks and auto industry failed to make the best choices for the American people and for themselves, but rather than let them fail, they get rewarded with bailouts.

Likewise, when the previous administration violated laws, ethics and the very principles this country was founded on, they are now being rewarded by being given the gift of "getting away with it" from the Obama Administration.

I'll tell you, though--it makes you wonder just what Barack's boys have in mind for his first four years... I mean, why cover the last guy's ass unless you think your own ass will need covering?

Rich Folks Still Setting Agenda, Still Pretending They're Not

Doesn't $1.1 trillion seem small to you?

Earlier this month, the twenty most powerful/wealthy nations got together to talk about how to solve the problems Earth's economy is facing. It seems it's set to contract for the first time in thirty years. Huh. Neat.

This was Obama's first big deal abroad and here is, in part, what the above-displayed article from NYTimes.com reported about him back on April 2, 2009:

“Today, we’ve learned the lessons of history,” Mr. Obama declared in a news conference in which he was noticeably relaxed, taking questions from journalists from India and China. But he also said that getting more than 20 countries to agree to common steps was particularly hard because “each country has its own quirks.”

The meeting, he said, exemplified the power of developing nations, heralding a new age in which decisions about the future of the global economy will no longer be made by an elite club of Western powers that have set the global rules since the Bretton Woods agreement in July 1944.

Really?

What do you call 20 rich folks in a big room in the UK, exactly?

Another thing that bugs me about this is that $1.1 trillion is nothing compared to the amounts we've been spending here in the US on our own economy. Wasn't it over $4 trillion we spent just last autumn when we bailed out banks?

What's worse is that this is a lot of money to prop up an economic system that just may have reached it's shelf-life. There's talk of creating one super-sized mega-system--a single, global economy with one currency.

I really hope that doesn't happen. Not just because it would make the New World Order freaks pee themselves with "I-told-you-so" flavored glee, but because bigger is NOT better.

The whole problem here is that things got so big they crumbled under their own weight. I think we need more, smaller economic systems. I'm fine with trading with other nations, but "globalism" doesn't appear to work when taken so far.

Just my ¥2, of course.

Nobel-Winning Economist Says Obama's Plan Hurts the Folks Who Elected Him (that's us)

Read it!

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who spoke out against Bush's lack of economic responsibility-taking for the disaster we're still living through is now pointing his finger at Obama. See, as politicians go, Obama is way better than Bush, but he seems to be just as bad in certain ways. According to Stiglitz, Obama's big solution to our economic issues is "ersatz capitalism."

"Ersatz," in case you're curious, is defined by Merriam-Webster.com as "being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation." So, in this case, it's not capitalism that Obama is practicing here. Thankfully, he's not saying it's socialism, either, but here's what he does say:

What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.

So what is the appeal of a proposal like this? Perhaps it’s the kind of Rube Goldberg device that Wall Street loves — clever, complex and nontransparent, allowing huge transfers of wealth to the financial markets. It has allowed the administration to avoid going back to Congress to ask for the money needed to fix our banks, and it provided a way to avoid nationalization.

But we are already suffering from a crisis of confidence. When the high costs of the administration’s plan become apparent, confidence will be eroded further. At that point the task of recreating a vibrant financial sector, and resuscitating the economy, will be even harder.

I've been saying, for a while now, that the government has been using the same old tricks to try and fix a failing system. Obama's government is no different in this sense. He is trying the same tricks that got us into this mess in the first place. Instead of forcing the men in suits to take responsibility for their choices, he's letting (almost) everyone keep their jobs and money while the real cost of the failure gets dumped on to us little people.

Gotta love that (crisis-of-)confidence builder, Obama. I almost miss Bush who you could always tell was a lying bastard. Obama seems like such a nice guy, but now he's ignoring the needs of actual Americans in favor of the needs of made-up businesses with corrupt people running them. Lovely.

Hay, Barry, where's my universal health care, man? I haven't seen a doctor in a decade. Yeah, you're welcome for your vote, jerkweed.

TheVlog (in HD) for 1/20/9: ThePete’s Adventure on Inauguration Day in DC part 3

PLEASE NOTE: This was SHOT in HD, but is not in HD here on YouTube thanks to problems I've been having uploading my HD videos. Sorry :( That said, the picture was still pretty clear when I looked at it on my laptop before uploading. What IS this video? ThePete, Siskita and Jay ThePal visit DC for the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama. This is part 3 of their inauguration day adventure! In this episode, Jay ThePal makes a new friend, Aretha sings and Barack Hussein Obama gets inaugurated! One more part 4 coming soon!!



Click here for a downloadable mp4 if you're having trouble with the Flash player above.

Obama Ditches YouTube After (not) Breaking the Law (Kind of)

OK, this is kind of a convoluted story here. According to two articles at ReadWriteWeb.com (here and here) President Barack Obama has had an interesting time using YouTube to deliver his weekly addresses.

As everyone knows, Prezzi Barry O'bama was posting his weekly vids on YouTube, but privacy advocates raised a big stink. The stink seems to be well founded since YouTube uses "long-term tracking cookies". My guess is that these cookies allow Google to know where you go after you leave YouTube? I don't know to be honest. Regardless, it seems that the White House using said cookies violates federal law. Yep. How many times did Bush violate federal law? Just a few times.

But worry not, Obamafans! The Obama Administration stopped violating federal law by, essentially, giving itself a pass. Which, you know, is pretty shitty. Talk about kingly behavior. I can hear Obama now:

"What's that? Using YouTube is uhhhhh violation of federal law? Well, uhhhh, let's just uhhhhh... changethelawforonlyus."

That's the very definition of being above the law. At least he had the decency to do it, uh, legally, by issuing himself an official exemption--just like Bush did with all of his signing statements.

Now, that was back in February--yesterday, ReadWriteWeb.com reported that the Obama Admin was ditching YouTube in favor of Vimeo (see cap above), and would no longer be using those pesky long-term cookies (we assume). Still, Obama and Pals broke the law.

Is this a concern of Abu Ghraib proportions?

Of course not.

But if this is how Obama treats the little laws, how is he going to treat the big ones when lives depend on it? Will principles, morals and/or the law win out? Or will the myth of security beat all?

The ObamaWatch continues...

Posted via email from thepete's posterous

Jay Doesn't Understand Obama's Plan

And neither do I.

Here's Jay's 12 second take:


Jay Doesn't Understand Obama's Plan on 12seconds.tv

Sure, it's an oversimplification, but if loans are what got us into trouble in the first place, how are more loans going to fix things?

Seriously: Banks give loans to people who can't afford them and then pawn off the lawns to someone else who then gets screwed.

Obama wants us to give money to the same banks who will then, somehow miraculously NOT give money to people who will default on the loans?

Since the economy is hurting, a LOT of folks won't have good enough credit to get loans, so who are these loans going to be given to?

ObamaWatch: Letting Us Down on Civil Liberties

Maybe President Amabo would do it right?

See how wrong all those racists are? A black guy can be as lame as a white guy! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, these five guys were in countries other than America. They were literally snatched from the street, kidnapped, transported to other countries, by American intelligence agents, via aircraft owned by Boeing (Jeppesen is their parent) and then tortured in those countries. They're now suing Boeing but can't have their day in court because the USG is invoking the "State Secrets Act" to stop them. The theory is that in order for the five guys to sue, they need evidence from the government that proves Boeing allowed this to happen on their planes. Of course, the USG doesn't want to give up said evidence because, we assume, it will make them look pretty bad too, right?

Well, right or wrong, the Obama Administration is keeping the State Secrets Acts firmly invoked.

Salon.com's Gary Greenwald makes the point in a recent opinion piece: "What makes this particularly appalling and inexcusable is that Senate Democrats had long vehemently opposed the use of the "state secrets" privilege in exactly the way that the Bush administration used it in this case, even sponsoring legislation to limits its use and scope."

So, now, Obama is protecting the Bush 43 Administration by keeping this evidence secret (despite the fact we all know it happened). Why protect the Bush Admin? My only guess is so that the Obama Admin has the latitude to also use the Extraordinary Rendition program to randomly kidnap people off the streets of foreign countries and then spirit them away to countries where torture is legal. From there, the CIA can ask questions, but locals can do the torturing. Well done, Barry!

Geh... now why did I buy that Obama sweatshirt and that Obama T-shirt?

Oh yeah: I had hope.

Of course, I'm not surprised by this--like I said, all men are created equal--in good ways and bad.

Posted via email from thepete's posterous

Cole Bombing Charges Dropped--What the Hell?

OK, when I saw this headline, I have to admit that I thought "See that? Another faulty terrorist case! Looks like the USG can't catch a real terrorist to save their lives."

Then I realized, that's not what this story is about. According to that article at Bloomberg.com, it turns out that "The U.S. dropped charges against the alleged mastermind of the bomb attack on the USS Cole while the Obama administration considers how to handle terrorist suspects detained at Guantanamo, the Defense Department said."

Wait--WHAT?
 
Because Obama wants to close Gitmo charges were dropped?

That makes no sense. That's like saying: "Well, I'm thinking about buying a car, might as well send my current car to the junk yard!"

Noooo, see, just because putting these guys on trial under military law is unfair, it doesn't mean charges should be dropped and they should go free--I mean, who ever said this? Obama never said "let's free everyone at Guantanamo" did he?

So why have charges against the Cole Bombing mastermind being dropped?
 
Maybe it IS a case of the USG not being able to catch a terrorist, after all?

Posted via email from thepete's posterous

The Obama Watch Begins

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

Thomas Jefferson, who is probably my favorite founding father, is believed to have said this and whether he did or not, it's the Truth. That's right, upper-case "T" Truth.

Just because we have a Democrat and a black guy in the White House does not mean racism is gone, the world loves us and Big Brother is now your kids' cool uncle.

Just because Bill Clinton left office with poll numbers so big they'd make John Holmes blush doesn't mean Slick Willy didn't earn his nickname.

While George W. Bush created the economic mess by failing to provide moral principles and strong, positive leadership, it was Clinton (who was no stranger to lax morals) set "W" up for some of the troubles he would see before his reign in the White House was over.

Clinton messed up in Somalia.

Clinton (in my opinion) waited too long to get involved in the Serbia/Bosnia mess.

I'm also rolling my eyes at Milosevic's all-too-timely death just before he was going to testify in his own war crimes trial.

There's also a question of what Clinton knew about the CIA's use of an airstrip in Mena, Arkansas while he was governor of that state.

Of course, I wasn't paying attention back then like I should have been--like we all should always be.

If we don't watch the edges of our freedom, there is no way we'll notice them shrinking.

If We, The People, don't watch our government and make sure they don't knock those edges back several feet, we may not notice our freedoms are gone until we discover they're long gone.

Barack Obama may very well be the good man that so many think he is. However, he is still part of a system that encourages bribery, corporate-favoritism and the exchange of morals for security.

So, as President Obama does a lot of things right (like signing the order to close the detention center at Gitmo), we can't sit back and expect him to be even close to the perfect leader.

Will he make sure that George W. Bush is prosecuted for his crimes?

Will he allow the government to spy on American citizens on American soil as Bush did?

It looks like he plans to follow through on his plans to withdraw from Iraq but how long will it take and will it be as quick a withdrawal as even Iraq seems to be ready for?

Every one of us must keep an eye on things since our mainstream media has proven they aren't up to the task. Don't listen to them when they tell you they did their best because they did not. The media is the fourth branch of government. It's not connected directly to it so it can move without interference from the rest of the government. Without it telling us accurately what our leaders are up to, we are on our own to determine just what the hell is going on so we know who we should vote for. Since they are not doing that, we must do it ourselves.

Like Jefferson is said to have said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I, for one, will be keeping my eye on things.

But don't trust me to be perfect either. We all need to watch, read, absorb and think for ourselves. None of us are perfect on our own. Together, that's another story.

ThePete's Washington DC Trip Day 3! (TheVlog 20090120)

iPhone edition!!

Here is the best of the footage we shot today, January 20, 2009, in Washington DC on my Jailbroken, unlocked iPhone:

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Click here to download the above video as a 13 meg mp4 file.

I couldn't livestream because they were using cell jammers, apparently. :(

President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama's Cabinet So Far

Wow, well, it's looking good for the forces of evil, or at least, the forces of lameness. I guess we indy-types shouldn't be too surprised that Obama can't deliver the "change" promise he ran on. He may still be promising new ideas, but let's look at some of the old people Obama's appointed to his cabinet so far:

Treasury Secretary: Timothy Geithner, president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
ThePete Says: Wow, one of the handful of people that controls America's money supply as TreasSec? Meh, I'd rather get some generally independent economist from outside the system that is currently crumbling under its own weight. Also, he was TreasSec under Clinton, so you might suggest that Geithner had something to do with setting the dinner table we're all financially going hungry at right now.

I remember reading something about how Geithner was supposed to be corporate-experience-free--but guess what? Running a FedRes bank is, for all intents and purposes, the same thing as running a corporation. Apparently, Geithner was also instrumental in orchestrating the bailout of Bear Sterns. He also worked for Kissinger Associates--as in Henry Kissinger (many look at this man as a war criminal).

Secretary of State: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
ThePete Says: Giving her "lost to Obama" status, this seems like a fair appointment (though I'd still prefer her as VP). However, it doesn't get much more Clintony than an actual Clinton. I know most of Americans are used to blaming Bush for all of our troubles, but remember, these economic problems are actually more complicated and older than the media is explaining right now. As I mentioned above, the table we're all starving at right now was set by the Clinton Administration.

That said, I actually believe Hillary will make an OK SoS. (!) Of course, that's in comparison to previous ones, which isn't setting the bar too high, I think.

Attorney General: Eric Holder, former deputy attorney general.
ThePete Says: Yikes, this is the dude who defended Chiquita Banana against lawsuits accusing the fruit company of supporting terrorism (which they did, in order to keep farming bananas in Columbia). He was also Deputy AG under Bill Clinton and feels drug penalties should be more harsh.

Defense Secretary: Robert Gates, a holdover from Bush administration.
ThePete Says: I love how the AP calls Gates a "holdover" from the Bush Admin. They're almost all holdovers from previous administrations. Yet the AP seems to think this is not significant. What's even funnier is that Gates is not only a holdover from George W.'s admin, but he was also the head of the CIA under George H.W. Bush. That makes him pretty much entrenched in evil. ;)

To be more specific, the Wikipedia page for Robert Gates reminds us of his role in the the Iran-Contra Affair. Remember that old chestnut?

Homeland Security Secretary: Gov. Janet Napolitano, D-Ariz.
ThePete Says: Don't think that just because she's a Democrat she's not a racist xenophobe like most southern-border-based Republicans. Seems Napolitano is quite the hawk when it comes to cracking down on illegal immigration having called for not only National Guard support along the border but also asking for more ICE resources to be sent to Arizona, as well. She was also a US state attorney under Bill Clinton--yep, she's another Clintonite.

National Security Adviser: Retired Marine Gen. James Jones.
ThePete Says: I don't know much about this guy. Turns out he's a former NATO commander and also served on the boards of Chevron and Boeing. Yeah, two big-ass companies, one oil and the other military/industrial (you know, like the complex). According to James L. Jones' Wikipedia page, he:

....became president of the Institute for 21st Century Energy, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and chair of the board of directors of the Atlantic Council of the United States. He also served as chairman of the Independent Commission on Security Forces of Iraq.

Hmmm, seems like that energy institute thing hasn't worked out so well and that whole thing where he was to, according to that same Wikipedia page:

...investigate for 120 days the capabilities of the Iraq armed forces and police.

That hasn't worked out either. Granted, he did find "serious deficiencies in the Iraq Interior Ministry and in the Iraq National Police" but his alleged strong negotiating skills didn't exactly get his findings accepted as fact. Of course, the Bush Administration isn't known for their acceptance of facts, are they?

Commerce Secretary: Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M.
ThePete Says: Meh, yet another Clintonite. Richardson was Energy Secretary under the Billster. He is also the object of scorn for some Chinese Americans who felt that he was unusually racisty during the Wen Ho Lee mess. Lee was the fellow who was wrongly accused by the Clinton admin for spying for the Chinese. Apparently, Richardson tried to encourage the idea that any Chinese people in the US could be spies.

Here's a big however--I do like Richardson. I've seen him in a bunch of interviews and he seems like a fairly reasonable guy. Another however is that just because he's reasonable doesn't mean he's a good leader.

National Economic Council Director: Lawrence Summers, former treasury secretary.
ThePete Says: Haha, another Clintonite and another guy who's partially responsible for our current money mess. Back in 1991 Summers was chief economist for the World Bank and wrote a memo suggesting that pollution from first world countries could be exported to third world countries which he consider to be "underpolluted".

You may also remember Summers as the dude who had to resign as president of Harvard University after he said publicly that women had less innate scientific ability than men.

Office of Management and Budget Director: Peter Orszag, director of Congressional Budget Office.
ThePete Says: I hardly know anything about this guy, either. But if he's in charge of money now, that worries me. However, Democracy Now reported that Orszag felt the bank bailout would make things worse, not better and testified to that. So, he gets points from me on that.

Veterans Affairs Secretary: Retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki
ThePete Says: Ahhh, OK, cool--this dude is OK, as far as military-types go. He was the guy who was ignored by the Bush Administration when he told them the Iraq Attack would require waaaay more troops that the Bushites wanted to send in. Turns out Shinseki was right (as you may have noticed).

TheCONCLUSION: I don't see a lot of change with this cabinet, so far. Sure, it's tentative and the names could change as they are rejected by vetting or by Congress. Still, there have to be perfectly competent people out there who have not held positions in the Clinton Admin or in the financial or corporate worlds who can be appointed. I'm sick of all of these damned insiders. Nothing is ever going to change if the same people keep getting cycled through Washington.

Am I being a bit harsh? Maybe, but it's the media's job to play devil's advocate for everything the government does. Figure, the government puts forth the "pro" argument for everything they do. Who will represent the "con" argument? Some lame Republican think-tanks? That's just letting the system criticize itself--the press needs to represent the non-government opinion and be critical of all. That's how they've let us down and that's why I cite only the negative aspects of Obama's appointees. I figure, if you want to read how good these people are, go to Obama's blog, Change.gov. Come to me for some contrarian stuff :)

LOLbama: I CAN HAZ HOPEBURGER

LOLbama, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

Nicked this from poobah.tumblr.com/post/59688866

I think this bit of photomanipulation really captures the almost absurd level of hope they many Americans are putting on BHO.

I'm just waiting for that economic stimulus check he promised to get to us before winter!

Time: BHO=FDR

Time: BHO=FDR, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

I saw this on a news stand the other day while I was out with my fried
Keith and it cracked me up. Don't know if I agree or not. I just
hope BHO doesn't let a Pearl-Harbory thing happen the way FDR did. Oh
and building the bomb--that was pretty lame, too.