And when I feel my finger on your trigger

Suspect in abortion doctor death warns of violence

The man charged with murdering a high-profile abortion doctor claimed from his jail cell Sunday that similar violence was planned around the nation for as long as the procedure remained legal, a threat that comes days after a federal investigation launched into his possible accomplices.
[...]
Tiller's clinic had been a target of regular demonstrations by abortion opponents. Most were peaceful, but his clinic was bombed in 1986 and he was shot in both arms in 1993. In 1991, a 45-day "Summer of Mercy" campaign organized by Operation Rescue drew thousands of abortion opponents to Wichita, and there were more than 2,700 arrests.

I'm a firm believer in free speech, and the test of that is when you support free speech from folks you disagree vehemently with. Another test of that is when you yell 'Fire! in a crowded theater.

Now let's take a look at the definition of 'terrorism' from Dictionary.com:

1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

Now let's look at how our country defines it:

U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d)

(d) Definitions
[...]
(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;
[...]
(5) the terms “terrorist sanctuary” and “sanctuary” mean an area in the territory of the country—
(A) that is used by a terrorist or terrorist organization—
(i) to carry out terrorist activities, including training, fundraising, financing, and recruitment;

So, by definition, what Scott Roeder did was terrorism. And it worked, Tiller's clinic,one of only 3 in the country, has closed it's doors. And Scott Roeder is celebrating that fact.

And while the anti-choice folks at Operation Rescue clutch their pearls and declaim him as a lone whacko, the facts are "the authorities found a slip of paper with the organization’s name in Mr. Roeder’s car when he was arrested, as well as the name of one of its leaders and her telephone number" and the 'leader' that the NYT didn't name is senior policy adviser Cheryl Sullenger, a terrorist that has been convicted of conspiring to bomb the Alvarado Medical Center in California. From her previous actions in helping track Dr. Tiller's movements it seems she should be indicted as an accessory.

So why isn't Operation Rescue been designated a terrorist group? And why isn't anyone who contributes to it guilty of funding a terrorist group?

I'm so glad you asked: Because they're white christains.

This movement is the American version of the Taliban. They seek to impose their religious values on others, subjugate women, and make America a theocracy.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Freedom

I'm not a lawyer. Surprised? Too much work, too much school. But I do love the law, and read about it often. So I was not surprised when I found this critique of Sonia Sotomayor from conservatarian blog Point of Law:

I suggested hope that she might apply such strong free-speech views to cases involving campaign finance restrictions.

Alas, we now know better. A former member of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, Sotomayor has written aggressively in favor of strict campaign finance regulation:

The tolerance in this country for questionable behavior by public officials is illustrated by the persistence of extremely troubling--but legal-- practices in the public arena. In one of the murkiest and least well-controlled areas, we find ourselves debating what the quid pro quo's are for campaign contributions. Here we have abandoned standards we would surely apply in any other context. We would never condone private gifts to judges about to decide a case implicating the gift-givers' interests. Yet our system of election financing permits extensive private, including corporate, financing of candidates' campaigns, raising again and again the question what the difference is between contributions and bribes and how legislators or other officials can operate objectively on behalf of the electorate. Can elected officials say with credibility that they are carrying out the mandate of a "democratic" society, representing only the general public good, when private money plays such a large role in their campaigns? If they cannot, the public must demand a change in the role of private money or find other ways, such as through strict, well-enforced regulation, to ensure that politicians are not inappropriately influenced in their legislative or executive decision-making by the interests that give them contributions. (footnotes omitted)

As I read her comments, Sotomayor seems either woefully ignorant of or utterly unconcerned by the centrality of political speech to the First Amendment, and the pretty self-evident notion that monies spent on or donated to campaigns constitute political speech.

Crap. simply crap. I know, having buckets full of money entitles one to buy a big house, a private jet, a fancy car. But the weird fetish of the right that political contributions are "free speech" makes no sense at all.

Until one understands that they want, they encourage, government takeover by the wealthy, and the corporations. Then it all makes sense. Bribery as a public policy is a feature, not a bug.

Clearly the writers of the 1st & 14th amendments had no intention of these laws being used for this purpose. It is a perverse agenda-driven analysis that sees a wealthy person's contributions to a political campaign as being worth more that someone donating pennies. Yet the conservatarian right continues to sound this cry, that being able to donate $1,000,000 to Sen. X's campaign will give you a quid pro quo with Sen. X after he/she is elected.

Yes, you can donate anything you want to a campaign. No, you can not expect anything in return except that your dollars are sepnt by the campaign.

Fools, idiots, bastards.

Deer Prudence ...or ... the buck stops here

I just saw a fawn a block from my house. I live near the middle of a town of 70,000 people. And I like venison, but run, Bambi, run!





Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight?

Rule of law, republican style:

Court orders Sanford to take stimulus money

The state Supreme Court Thursday ordered Governor Mark Sanford to accept $700 million in disputed stimulus money included in the state budget.
[...]
The writ was included in a 5-0 ruling in favor of school administrators and two South Carolina students who went up against Gov. Sanford in court.
[...]
The anti-bailout governor refused to take the cash even after legislators passed a budget requiring him to do so.

In response to the ruling, Sanford said the state has "a fundamentally flawed governmental structure that impedes and hurts progress in the state."

Fundamentally flawed!? As in "checks and balances" between the 3 branches of government? As in the same structure of the US Constitution?

He doesn't want to be governor, or president, he wants to be king!




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

There lives a girl everybody calls Patches

As if we needed further proof the writers at National Review Online (NRO) are one enchilada short of a combo plate, John "the human female is visually attractive to the human male at, or shortly after, puberty, and for only a few brief years thereafter" Derbyshire allows a commentor to demonstrate Extreme Stupid.

Rivalling Vanilla Ice's claim that being an upper middle-class white dude was key to understanding the urban hip-hop experience, The Derb's commentor criticizes Sonia Sotomayor's life story for being too privileged:

Derb — I’ve been hoping that someone might be bold enough to rain on the Sotomayor “compelling life story” parade.

The woman grew up in the capital of the world, went to two Ivy League schools, and was blessed by Providence with the precisely correct right race-gender two-fer for the moment.

This is a story of privilege, dammit, not adversity.

Curv3ball, writing at The Poorman, from whom we heard about this, has this to say:

Word.

For me, on the other hand, life’s been a non-stop hustle from the jump: grew up white, male and middle class in the suburbs, raised in a stable two-parent home with money for college…I marvel that I somehow managed to make it out alive and not end up just another statistic. The shit, as they say, was of the realest variety.

Despite surviving that ordeal, my ceiling is as low as my birth.

If only I could’ve caught a break, lost my pops, seen my mom scrub some toilets and moved to the projects, I’d probably be John Roberts by now. Cause that’s pretty much how kids from the projects roll.

Derbyshire goes onto rant that his story is as poignant as Sotomayor's:

Like my reader, and I'm sure a lot of other Americans, I get mighty annoyed by the unspoken implication in a lot of commentary that anyone not a member of a Protected Minority must have grown up in a twelve-bedroom lakeside mansion and been chauffered off to prep school with a silver spoon in his mouth. Judge Sotomayor was raised in public housing? So was I. Her mother was a nurse working late shifts? So was mine. When did white working poor people disappear off the face of the earth? Where are the eager listeners to their "compelling stories"?

Here's the public housing that poor, deprived Johnny knew:

The house was built in 1948 by the town of Northampton. It was a "council house" — that is, public housing let at a weekly rent. The initial rent was 19 shillings a week (about $3.80 at the prevailing exchange rate). My parents continued to rent it until 1982, by which time the weekly rent was £12.64 (though this was a reduced rent on account of their ages). I then bought the house for them under the policy instituted by Margaret Thatcher's government, of selling council houses to tenants at discount. Because my parents had been renting for over thirty years, they got the maximum fifty percent discount. I paid Northampton £8,425 for the house. At the time of writing (late 2007), houses like this in Friars Avenue sell for £150,000-160,000.

Cool. He bought a government-subsidized house. How, you know, socialist. How does that compare to Sotomayor's early housing?

Ms. Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was born in 1954 and grew up in the New York City Housing Authority's (NYCHA's) Bronxdale Houses. Bronxdale Houses, located in the Bruckner section of the Bronx, has 28 seven-story buildings with 1,496 apartments. Bronxdale is home to approximately 3,500 residents. A modern, high-tech community center opened its doors on the grounds of this development back in 2007, and offers educational and recreational activities for children and adults of the development and the surrounding community.

And how about the rest of her upbringing?

Ms. Sotomayor was raised in public housing by her mother, who worked as a nurse at a methadone clinic, to support Ms. Sotomayor and her brother Juan. At the tender age of eight, Ms. Sotomayor was diagnosed with diabetes and just one year later her father, a factory worker, died of a heart condition. She is no stranger to adversity, but she did not let these challenges deter her from reaching her goals.

So, Mr. Derbyshire, your charming English home is somehow equal to 28 7-story buildings, aka The Projects, in The Bronx?

I would write more, but I simply don't have the energy. This kind of "I was born a poor white child" kind of reverse racism has never played well, and now it looks even more ridiculous. Derbyshire, for all his obvious faults, may truly believe that he was as challenged as Sotomayor, but the facts really don't support this. Fantasize all you want about being oppressed, it's really all in your head.

Bastard.

At last, my love has come along . . .

We recently watched "Cadillac Records", the fictionalized history of Chess Records. While much of the details were wrong, the basic story had resonance. Chess single-handedly brought 'race' and blues records to a largely unaware audience. Leonard Chess seems like a visionary today:

Leonard and his brother Phil were involved in the black nightclub scene on the South Side of Chicago by 1947. They soon became associated with Aristocrat Records, and moved the company away from black pop and jazz and closer to pure blues music with artists such as Muddy Waters, Sunnyland Slim and Willie Dixon. Leonard Chess himself played bass drum on one of Muddy Waters's early sessions. In 1948, the Chess brothers took control of the company and in 1950 renamed it Chess Records. "My Foolish Heart" (Gene Ammons), "Rollin' Stone" (Muddy Waters) and "That's All Right" (Jimmy Rogers) showcased the company's new direction.

During the Chess heyday, the early recordings of an acoustic Robert Johnson morphed into the electric adventures of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Howlin' Wolf. This music in turn was embraced by young musicians in England, and eventually brought home to the U.S. as the '60s kids flipped out over remakes of early Chess hits by The Rolling Stones, among others.

What was it all about? Here's Howlin' Wolf doing Smokestack Lightning:




Here's Muddy singing a Willie Dixon song:




And here's Willie:




But Chess's biggest hit was arguably the first true 'crossover' recording, a song that made it up high on both Pop & R'n'B charts:

The song became James's signature song and was the third in a string of successful songs from her Chess Records debut album At Last!. Upon the song's release in April 1961, it became her second number 2 R&B hit and crossed over to pop radio, reaching number 47 on the Billboard Hot 100. Despite its rather low pop chart standing, the song is well-known and is still played regularly on oldies radio stations.

Indeed.

Money, its a crime.

Even in Crisis, Banks Dig In for Fight Against Rules

As the financial crisis entered one of its darkest phases in October, a handful of the nation's largest banks began holding daily telephone sessions. Murmurs were already emanating from Washington about the need for a wide-ranging regulatory overhaul, and Wall Street executives girded for a fight.
[...]
The nine biggest participants in the derivatives market - including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America - created a lobbying organization, the CDS Dealers Consortium, on Nov. 13, a month after five of its members accepted federal bailout money.
[...]
Through political action committees and their own employees, securities and investment firms gave $152 million in political contributions from 2007 to 2008, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission data.

The top five companies - Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Credit Suisse - gave $22.7 million and spent more than $25 million combined on lobbying activities in that period, according to election data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The banksters are spending OUR money to lobby against OUR knowing how OUR money is spent. The rich really are different, they have more money.

Well jeez, I guess that's OK seeing as how it's not like they screwed up the whole economy ... oh, wait a minute, they did screw up the world's economy because of their greed! So at a time when states are gutting police, education and firefighting budgets these folks think a wee bit of oversight is egregious.

F**k'em and may they burn in hell.

Heaven's New Blue(s) Star

Koko Taylor has passed away, she was 80 and it was a helluva run.

I was lucky enough to work with her on two occasions, in two different towns, in two different states, 2 years apart, in the mid-1980's. The shows went great, she and her band were so tight and so good I wondered why the hell they were working clubs and allowing me to run sound for them. She had more W.C. Handy awards than any other artist.

If you ever saw her you know that she was a force of nature. A big woman with a voice to match but nice as pie and funny. There was nothing ladylike about her singing, just pure woman, and you knew this was not a woman to be messed with. She was nice to me but could be hell on club owners and booking agents. Yet another thing I admired about her.

When I worked with her she traveled with her husband, Pops Taylor. He was an almost diminutive man that dressed sharp and was fiercely protective in a professional and polite way. I remember when a friend told me of his passing in 1989 and I felt saddened and wondered how she could go on. But she did, and some of her best years were ahead of her. Amazing for a someone who didn't have a music career until she was 38.

At 80 she was still doing 70 dates a year and was looking forward to her next tour in Europe and developing new material.

Here's another personal remembrance by Blue Girl.

Koko, I just Can't Let Go:

Say The Secret Muslim, Win A Prize

Do it in the name of Heaven, you can justify it in the end

(Original version, not the Coven recording)

In an act of domestic Christian terrorism, an assassin yesterday killed a doctor who provided reproductive services to women:

Late-term abortion doctor George Tiller, a prominent advocate for abortion rights wounded by a protester more than a decade ago, was shot and killed Sunday at his church in Wichita, a city official said.

A City Hall official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak about the case told The Associated Press that the 67-year-old doctor was killed Sunday morning at Reformation Lutheran Church.

Police spokesman Gordon Bassham would not confirm the victim's identity pending notification of relatives. He said the shooting occurred at 10:03 a.m. and the gunman fled the scene in a 1993 powder blue Ford Taurus registered in another part of the state.

Face it, people, this is domestic terrorism. And for the many Christians who have a hard time using that phrase, imagine how devout peace-loving Muslims feel when the far right pundits and populace talk about Islamic terrorism as if every Muslim was a jihadi.

It's the extremists, people. Extremists like Randall Terry:

First, we should grieve for him that he did not have an opportunity to properly prepare his soul to face his Maker. Unless some miracle happened, he left this life with his hands drenched with the innocent blood of tens of thousands of babies that he murdered. Surely there will be a dreadful accounting for what he has done.

It now falls to pro-life activists like you and me to stand strong and unflinching in the face of the unjust criticism we will now endure because of his killing. And so I turn my attention to the attacks that will follow his death.

You narcissistic fuck! He "he did not have an opportunity to properly prepare his soul" because your guy murdered him. Yet you whine that Tiller will "face his Maker". Read the rest of Terry's screed in which he conflates the anti-abortion movement with Dr. ML King and the civil rights movement. He never once uses the word "murder" to describe Tiller's killing. He never once criticizes the accused killer of murder.

Instead, he warns his true believers:

we must use Dr. Tiller’s death as a “teaching moment” to pull the veil away from the insidious murder that is happening every day, every hour, in abortion mills like Tiller’s across the country.

Not one word of condemnation of the murder of Dr. Tiller, or of his accused assassin. Just tacit approval and a further call to arms.

Of course, Terry's family values can't withstand too much scrutiny, even by far-right web sites:

In March 2002, Mr. Terry and wife Andrea, speaking in churches, visited the Jacksonville/St. Augustine area, where the median home price was about $120,000. The couple had been looking to buy a house in a "homestead state," where creditors cannot seize a family's home, Mr. Terry said. (In varying degrees, such rights are recognized in several states, including Texas and Florida.) They considered the $432,000 house and "said, what the heck, let's do this," Mr. Terry explained.

To secure the purchase, they needed $20,000 by April 30, 2002. Mr. Terry began calling potential donors, offering in exchange for cash gifts quantities of a country music CD he had recorded in Nashville. His plan worked. By April 30, "We had $20,017.... We made the deposit."

But earlier that same month, Mr. Terry had submitted an affidavit to a New York State family court on his financial condition. The court had ordered him to account for his finances in response to a petition Cindy Terry had filed earlier, saying that Mr. Terry was not paying a fair share of child support. In the affidavit, Mr. Terry wrote, "The past two years have been difficult financially for me.... I am three months behind in my rent, in addition to my numerous other debts. Since June, in order to pay necessities, we have been selling many items...."

In a May 7, 2002, order, the court noted that "Mr. Terry is possessed of actual or income-producing ability significantly greater than that which is set forth in his financial disclosure affidavits or [2001] Income Tax Returns," and ordered him to pay $75 more each week in child support.

Nice. He can tilt at windmills like a simple-minded modern Don Quixote to protect the unborn, but his actual flesh-and-blood kids can't get child support.

As Rep. Barney Frank once said: "Life begins at conception and ends at birth."

Terry really is a tin soldier.

Bastard.