September 20, 2014, Same old
It actually slipped my mind that, two days ago, this blog slipped through its thirteenth anniversary; I suppose I should give it a bar mitzvah, but then, just how old is it in [talking] dog years? Damned if I know.
So many things seem so old and tired (besides my nearly fifty-two year old self).
Anyway, we can start with this Atlantic observation (and of course, hit-piece) of Hillary Clinton (she hasn't gone away either; btw she and I share a birthday). The piece notes Hillary's campaign shtick (including her recent book) are all about playing it "safe," and not coming out with bold policy pronouncements or prescriptions or anything particularly interesting, the money line being "Has America ever been so thoroughly tired of a candidate before the campaign even began?" The piece fails to question why we can believe she wouldn't be the logical continuation of the existing order, meaning Barack Obama's third term/George W. Bush's fifth term/Bill Clinton's seventh term. Since that's what Wall Street wants us to have [note this observation, also from The Atlantic, about how all too often, financial criminals avoid paying back restitution for their crimes in the few instances they even are held accountable any more], we can be reasonably sure that's what we're going to have. Hillary won't rock boats, maybe she'll be even more hawkish in trying to hold the empire together as it falls apart, and probably will be... indistinguishable from her recent predecessors. You'd think even her opponents (many of whom simply object to a woman wielding apparent power, even a dynastic like Mrs. Clinton) would be as tired of opposing her as everyone else is of seeing her, by now. Sigh.
One thing we can expect to continue from either Mrs. Clinton (or whomever instead of her Wall Street decrees is sufficiently favorable it to be permitted to accede to the office) is a continuation of our draconian policies toward swarthy people in general, and those whom we arbitrarily accuse of terrrrrrrorism in particular. If there's a poster boy for what I have been trying to call your attention to here at TTD for lo these years, it would be tortured American citizen Jose Padilla. You will recall that in 2002, Padilla was arrested "on the battlefield" of O'Hare Airport (the whole world is now the battlefield, boys and girls), summarily stripped of his rights, thrown into years of total isolation in a military brig, and then just as abruptly [on the eve of the Supreme Court granting his second habeas petition [the first dismissed on a bullsh*t technicality of "improper venue"] moved to civilian custody and charged, tried and convicted on made-up charges of conspiracy to conspire to maybe make phone calls to bad people, yada yada yada... seventeen years four months in a super-max. Our friend Andy Worthington gives us the details of a court decision by his sentencing judge (Judge Marcia Cooke of federal court in Miami) who, following an appeals court decision that her 17 year sentence wasn't draconian enough and increased it to 21 years. As Padilla is a former Chicago gang banger, but most importantly, he is a Latino who converted to Islam, most Americans probably wouldn't care what happened to him-- no matter how arbitrarily and harshly (and illegally) he has been treated-- even if they actually knew (which, of course, they do not), and even if what happened to him was widely reported (which, of course, it is not).
And as to Scotland, after all the trouble William Wallace went through to get Scotland its freeeeeeedummmmm!!!!... it seems the Scots don't actually want it. They apparently want the same old arrangement they've had for over 300 years... freedom is one thing... but pensions and National Health Service... are quite another.
Huh...