Dear Lord, it’s been a dozen years, to the day, since the first post on this blog. Where does the time go?

John Cole gets right to it on “the national debate” after the D.C. Navy Yard shooting which left a dozen victims (plus the apparent perp) dead. The national consciousness will, of course, “move on,” like it always does. But this sort of thing seems to be happening more and more frequently. And yes… it is because we are becoming a more crass and violent society at every level (starting with the rotting fish head at the top as he proposes another pointless war against someone somewhere, because his overlords in finance demand it), as we promote violence in every last...

. Because September 11th only comes once a year. It’s only been a dozen years… indeed, I’ve been blogging for all of them… and yet, it all seems… so long ago when I got put out of my office a block from the WTC by the morning’s events, which seem ever more a distant memory (though I was there), and yet, the perpetual underpinning of what America has become. Ah… just a dozen years ago… back when things like the Bill of Rights seemed so… relevant. When it wasn’t my college classmate (twelve years ago, a political non-entity in the...

That’s the sentence handed down by a military court-martial to Bradley Manning for leaking evidence of the United States’s war crimes and other acts of malfeasance. The idea is to deter others who might have the audacity to try to let the public know what their government is up to. Hell– the government was arguing for an even longer sentence– of sixty years or more, to assure that Manning would die in prison for having the audacity to tell the American people what their government and military are doing in their name with their tax money. Damn him. Of course,...

Well, this piece from WaPo sort of lays out the conventional wisdom (as WaPo is wont to do)… to wit, given that the majority of the poor bastards still held at GTMO hail from Yemen, and given that there is a purported “threat” coming from “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” allegedly based in Yemen, this will “complicate” the return of said Yemeni men to their home country, which of course, had been held up by Barack Obama for years now, in response to “the underpants bomber,” but was supposedly “resumed” in response to the GTMO hunger strike. Of course,...

It seems that uber-whistleblower and former contractor to the NSA Edward Snowden has, at least for the next twelvemonth, been given asylum in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Perhaps a September Obama-Putin summit will be canceled as a result of this… or perhaps it won’t. Russia is obviously an irritant, along with Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba and the few other countries flexing their independence from Washington’s jackboot. Having both a nuclear arsenal and huge oil reserves, Russia can pretty much do what it likes… and has. Actual national sovereignty independent of the financial interests running most of the world: imagine that? Let me...

Was it that much of a surprise that George Zimmerman of Sanford, FL was acquitted in the homicide of Trayvon Martin? You’ll recall that originally, police didn’t even want to charge Mr. Zimmerman with killing Mr. Martin, who, after all, represented American society’s ultimate bete noire, a young Black man. But, you know… the public outcry and all. I’m not going to comment specifically on the case, or on the outcome. Indeed, this from the Atlantic says it more articulately than I ever could, noting essentially that “we wuzn’t there…” Where the only living witness is the alleged perp, “proof...

Chris Cillizza of WaPo ordinarily devotes his life to the conventional wisdom, i.e., being a legitimate heir to the late David Broder of WaPo… and, needless to say, being a useful repository of… conventional wisdom. Color me surprised by this sudden reality check on the part of… Mr. Cillizza… who gives us this compilation noting that political donors of meaning, to wit, the ones who donate big enough that politicians pay attention (not to mention do their bidding…) number barely 31,385 in this whole freaking country of 300,000,000 people…… he also links to this even more useful piece… WOW. Just...

From the great Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, we get this piece indicating that the Dept. of Defense has decided to identify the 48 men who are deemed “too dangerous to try, but too Muslim to release” and hence subject to indefinite detention. For whatever reason, the Government decided to honor this particular Freedom of Information Act request… given that the Big O’s approval ratings have finally taken the Bush-like nosedive finally appropriate to well, doing things like the latest NSA surveillance over reach, i.e., being Bush… maybe, a few interesting moves might be in order. Then again, Candace...