Psychopolitik 2.0

If you’re reading this, you know that Nucleus is gone. The spam & handling of trackbacks & tags was too much. If you’ve linked to a post in the past couple days, change the link, otherwise everything is fine for the most part. If I see any glitches in the import they’ll be fixed, no worry.

Update: some of the posts have words missing at the top or hyperlinks deactivated. Argh…

Rather than try to fix every single post, I’m going to edit the ones that show up on the front. From there all will be well anyway, no sense getting all bent out of shape over stuff that’s been up for months.

Update 2: For readers using Feedburner, change your links!!! The
previous feedburner address stopped updating, use this one instead:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/psychopolitik/wp

Road Rage” is soooooo five minutes ago:

To you, that angry, horn-blasting tailgater is suffering from road rage. But doctors have another name for it

 

For anyone who’s ever endured late-night infomercials: Yes, there is a rational, sober-minded, philosophical reason for your desire to beat Matt Lesko with a bag of nickels…

Props.

For some reason while flipping through channels late at night I hovered on a repeat of “Fox News Watch” long enough to hear Cal Thomas say, concerning the latest allegations of US soliders killing civilians:

“While they’re airing these reports of alleged atrocities — and if they happened, that’s what they are, atrocities — what people aren’t hearing enough about are the atrocities of the other side, the murders they’re carrying out”

Two things:

1) actually, we are hearing about that. Constantly. There isn’t much in the way of graphic detail, but considering what we’ve heard up to this point I think anyone with an IQ above their shoe size knows those people are, to use the technical term, f%#$ing insane.

2) assuming for the moment that Cal SERIOUSLY meant that we aren’t hearing enough about it, there’s actually logical reason for emphasis on what our troops are being accused of in relation: when islamic-extremist terrorists kill innocent people it’s EXPECTED! The US military — like any other “official” military — is assumed to operate by certain rules, the general gist of the most basic part being “don’t deliberately kill people that aren’t trying to kill you”. So, for US troops to kill innocent people is a violation, whereas for the nuts running around doing things like executing people for wearing shorts or killing opposing sect members that is par for the course.

It says a lot about the mindset of diehard hawks that their response to wrongdoing on our part is “b-b-but..but look at THEM!!“. There’s a double standard here for a reason: we claim to have rules to war, they don’t.

The head of an electronics company is actually advocating putting RFID chips into immigrants & guest workers to track them. Yes, like we do with pets or cattle.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Here was some idiot’s view on the raid on William Jefferson’s congressional office:

…the FBI raid was overly aggressive. The same result could probably have been achieved with a properly executed court order. But there is conflicting precedent about how much legislative-branch protection the Constitution provides from a legitimate criminal investigation.

The current matter hopefully will get to the Supreme Court quickly. Some historians are saying it is the first raid of a representative’s quarters in 219 years. It could be the last. Although it’s hard to work up much sympathy for a “culture of corruption” Congress, the need to keep men in black from breaking into the offices is almost a no-brainer in any high-school civics class. (emphasis mine)

A search warrant doesn’t count anymore?

The feds must need some super special “begging warrant” to go after congressmen, where instead of doing an actual search they just send someone to kneel outside of the office & say “PLEEEEEEEASE let us investigate!!”

this a few moments ago:

Senior executives at Fannie Mae manipulated accounting to collect millions in “maximum, undeserved bonuses” and deceive investors, a federal report charged Tuesday. The government-sponsored mortgage company was fined $400 million. (emphasis mine)

[sarcasm]Whu? A company so heavily supported by the government that it’s considered a defacto arm of it, cooking the books? Shocking![/sarcasm]

The rest of the article might as well not exist. Once you know it’s government-sponsored, you know enough…

tags: US+politics, Fannie+Mae, mortgage, accounting, fraud]]>

investigating one of their own:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Tuesday that the FBI and the Justice Department “took the wrong path” when they searched a Democratic congressman’s office this weekend as part of an anti-corruption probe. “We understand that they want to support and pursue the process that the Justice Department is trying to pursue,” Hastert, a Republican from Illinois, said. “But there’s ways to do it, and my opinion is that they took the wrong path.”

Over the weekend, The FBI searched the Washington home and office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-Louisiana, and found $90,000 of allegedly ill-gotten funds in the freezer of his home, according to an affidavit. […] Leaders from both both parties and both houses of Congress have expressed concern about the search.

On Monday, both Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Hastert said they were “very concerned” about the search, which was conducted under a warrant issued by a federal judge. (emphasis mine)

At least he had the apparent luxury of them getting a warrant before searching. That they’re having issues with this is an utter slap in the face & should serve as a reminder that these fools represent no one but themselves. Regular people get nailed to the wall for less every DAY, you see them addressing that? Nope.

What’s their excuse? “Hey! That’s uncharted territory! We should be cautious & skeptical of such things!”

Hastert said the search was the first time a lawmaker’s office had been searched in U.S. history. “Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years,” Hastert said on Monday.

Well everything I’ve learned ever since I started paying attention to politics leads me to believe that the reason you’re barking about it is because if not for the rampant double standards we have when it comes to law & political power most of our current congressmen — you included — would be in prison.

Criminals, congressmen, same thing…

One could say about much of the screaming over immigration from both “sides” that it’s “childish”.  Well, WaPo gives reason to retire that term as an insult:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico: One hard kick launched the soccer ball around the rusted edge of the metal fence, down the sloping grade into a flat expanse of grass. Kids, giggling and jostling, bounded past the end of the fence line. Out of Mexico. Into the United States. No big deal.

It goes on from there into an examination of how cultures have blended along the border to the point where it’s really silly to call it one. The whole thing says a lot, but especially striking is that image of kids crossing into the US to go get a soccer ball: without the State, without politics, there are no borders, there are just vague zones where cultures blend in a gradient, much like the color table in Photoshop or somethin’. This — the “go too far this way and you’re commiting a crime”, the need for permission to travel — is artificial.

Those children don’t care that they’re crossing into another country because the idea itself is learned, particularly from elites. The children didn’t create the warfare-welfare state, the children didn’t bring force into the equation on so much of modern life, the children didn’t create this situation where simply by crossing a line drawn in the sand you’re considered to be undermining a whole society — a gross exaggeration, thanks to the confusion of a people with the government it happens to have.

No. The grownups screwed up this one.

The grownups threw arbitrary limits on immigration. The grownups meddled with the culture of others for power & unearned gain.

The grownups constructed a state system that is threatening to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

For now, we have to figure out how to address the immediate result. We have to figure out how to simultaneously correct the error of forcing people underground while preventing the exploitation of our mess for the purpose of doing us harm. In the long run though, this cannot hold. Call the current debate whatever else you want to — “ignorant”, “small-minded”, “hypocritical” — but leave the kids out of it.

Right on cue:

A Senate committee approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage Thursday, after a shouting match that ended when one Democrat strode out and the Republican chairman bid him “good riddance.”

“I don’t need to be lectured by you. You are no more a protector of the Constitution than am I,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., shouted after Sen. Russ Feingold declared his opposition to the amendment, his affinity for the Constitution and his intention to leave the meeting.[…]

Amid increasing partisan tension over President Bush’s judicial nominees and domestic wiretapping, the panel voted along party lines to send the constitutional amendment — which would prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages — to the full Senate, where it stands little chance of passing.

Immigration isn’t working as a wedge issue because Bush wants us to take after France on that one & the party is split otherwise, so they go for playing the anti-gay card. Predictable. Give it a few days & they’ll go back to beating the war drums for Iran, these things are seemingly on an endless loop…

tags: US+politics, US+Senate, Arlen+Specter, Russ+Feingold, gay+marriage, homophobia, US+Constitution]]>