Obama's Big Foreign Policy Speech: Authorize Him To Wage War Everywhere In The World.

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Obama's major foreign policy speech today:  he will establish rules for using drones in his assassination program; and he wants congress to revise the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to authorize the U.S. government to use force in "many" smaller battlefields, instead of just Afghanistan.  Very sneaky, scary, horrifying proposal.  The AUMF limited the war to al Queda and those who attacked us on 9/11.  A revision would expand it to authorize permanent war any place in the world.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-outlines-new-rules-for-drones/2013/05/23/1b5918e6-c3cb-11e2-914f-a7aba60512a7_story.html?hpid=z1

 A few days ago, an Obama administration official publicly stated that the government's plan was to continue the U.S. Wars Against the Middle East for an additional 20 years -- 30 years total.  Today's speech hid the lead.  Lots of promises to rein in the assassination program, to release some prisoners from Guantanamo, but the lead for this speech is today Obama is officially requesting congress to revise the AUMF which was passed by Congress immediately after 9/11, and authorized war against those who had attacked us on 9/11.  It's obvious that the AUMF has been stretched way beyond what was authorized originally.  Those who attacked us on 9/11, as far as we know, were al Queda, and al Queda was almost wiped out before the U.S. helped strengthen them by sending money and weapons to the al Queda affiliates in Libya and Syria.  Nonetheless, the AUMF is out of gas, and the wars must end.  Everybody involved in the 9/11 attacks has been killed, and it's time to end these wars.

Now what Obama wants Congress to do (and what most of Congress wants to do) is to revise the AUMF to say that the president has the authority to wage war against any individual anywhere, in any country, bomb any country, any time, if he thinks that person might be a threat to the U.S.  This would eliminate the constitutional checks on war, would eliminate the ability of citizens to oppose wars, because the war would simply never end. 

Our constitution does not give the president the authority to take this country into war.  Instead, it specifically states that only congress has the authority to declare war.  Further, the only war authority given to the federal government is to provide for the common defense, which means they must defend this country.  They were not given authority to start wars of aggression against other nations, or to go search the world to try to find a possible enemy,  then start a war wherever that person happens to live.  Permanent war means a permanent elimination of our civil rights as citizens.

This is Obama's biggest move, and the most dangerous one to our nation.  Everybody needs to oppose this and write your senators and representatives to demand that they do not revise or amplify the AUMF, but instead end the wars, end the AUMF, and bring our troops home. 

The Irish Proclamation, 1916

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At the start of Easter Week (the week after Easter Sunday) in Dublin, Ireland, in 1916, a group of Irish people struggling for Irish independence from England read the Irish Proclamation, declaring Ireland to be a free nation.  The English reacted to this announcement with a brutal assault and murdered most of the people involved in the Irish Easter Uprising (or "Rising").  Because of the heroic stand taken by the people on this day, within a few years the Southern Part of Ireland did obtain its independence, although England continues to occupy the Northern part of Ireland.  

Padraig Pearse stood outside the General Post Office in Dublin and read this Proclamation.  Note the reference to the exiled Irish children in America.  Irish people were forcibly removed from their own land for generations, and millions were sent to live in exile because England claimed the land of Ireland for itself.  As a result, there are today 80 million Irish people living in exile, throughout the world. 

Poblacht na h Éireann (Irish Republic)

The Provisional Government

of the

Irish Republic

To the people of Ireland.

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty: six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

Josephine Gibbons

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Christopher Dorner: We All Cheered When He Was Killing Muslims, Gave Him A Parade And Medals.

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Chris Dorner, ex-military, former LAPD, allegedly murdered several people including cops, then was tracked by the LAPD to a cabin in Lake Arrowhead where he was burned to death.

I don't support Dorner's acts in killing Americans. But if this incident is to be anything other than the public viewing of the hunting and burning to death of yet another black American man, we all should step back and try to look at the events which led up to this week's murder.

To begin, Dorner joined the military in 2002, apparently in response to the 9/11 attacks, presumably with the idea in mind that he wanted to defend his country. So what happened next? Go view his military records released by the military. He has two periods of service which have been blacked out, presumably classified, one for two years, combined with two medals for service in Iraq and in "The War Against Terror." What did our government teach this man to do? Murder. But also kidnap? Torture? Slaughter?  Be brutal? 

You see the photos of him with the enormous muscles on his arms, sleeves rolled up so everyone can see what a tough guy he was (steroids?). Lots of pictures of him with guns. I'd say he was trained to be a killer. And guess who embraced him? One of the most violenct police forces in the nation, the LAPD.

Beyond that, why this manhunt, why the $1.0 million reward? Was somebody worried that not only would Dorner expose the criminals inside the LAPD, but also reveal to the world what he did in the military, what he was trained to do by our government.

The murder of a cop is no worse than the murder of a civilian. The LAPD is notorious for killing civilians. The funeral of the one cop (sheriff?) this week was reportedly expecting 8000 people to attend, was televised, and was preceded by a miles-long parade of cop cars and cops, motorcycles and cops, and motorcycle "patriots" who love the violence of cops. And the funeral was televised live. I do not recall ever seeing the funeral of a victim murdered by the police in which police from all over the state insisted on attending to pay their respects to the victim.

Make no mistake: the Los Angeles police kill lots of civilians.  "Killings by local police jump sharply: Officers and deputies in L.A. County fatally shot 54 people last year, nearly 70% more than the year before." L.A. Times article June 10, 2012; http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/10/local/la-me-cop-shootings-20120610). 

54 people killed by the police in Los Angeles alone in 2011, while only 72 police officers were killed in the entire country in the same year. I'd say the cops are doing a lot more killing of civilians than vice versa. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57434161/72-police-killed-in-2011-in-u.s.-up-29-percent/

The worshipping of cops and military is just one of the unfortunate side-effects of our nation being committed to waging war against everyone, all the time. The chickens do come home to roost. The violence we commit against civilians in other nations will inevitably be committed against us.

When I saw hundreds of cops flooding into the area where this guy was supposedly holed up yesterday, standing with guns and rifles ready to kill him if he tried to escape (no question that's what they were going to do), watching the building burn, I was sickened.  All the television stations carried it live.

I don't think anyone should be killed or be killing, and I don't see this guy as a hero. He strikes me as typical of the worship of guns and violence among the police and military. But nonetheless, he should have been given the chance to give himself up. There should have been police negotiators there to try to get him to give himself up. Like they did with the guy in Alabama who kidnapped the kid and murdered the bus driver -- they waited 8 days on him.

But for this L.A. cop, black, they decided to either burn him to death or shoot him down if he tried to escape. That's the way it looked to me, and it was pretty disgusting. Was race an element in how this played out? Without question.

We made this man. As long as he was slaughtering muslims in the middle east, our country threw him parades, mindlessly shouted out at him "Thank you for your service," put stickers on their cars saying "I support the troops [murdering Muslims in the middle east]." But when he used what we taught him here in the U.S., killed a few people, suddenly the nation is up in arms. A black man with a gun? Kill him, burn him to death.

You cannot look at this episode without realizing that we create monsters by our wars against everyone. We train men to be killers when we drop them into a nation of poor unarmed people and tell them that everyone is the enemy, because those people do not want us there, we are their enemy. When those trained killers come back home, what do we see?

20,000 U.S. military service women raped every year. Nobody's bothered to count the number of women in Iraq and Afghanistan who have been raped by Americans, but eventually we'll see their half-American children wandering the bombed out rubble we have left behind. One U.S. veteran commits suicide every 65 minutes in this country. Suicide is simply another form of homicide. And let's not pretend that racism is not an ongoing oppressive burden on all black people in this country, because it is, and the LAPD is notorious for its racism.

I don't support killing by anyone. But calling Dorner a coward or pretending he is not the product of the U.S. Military War On Terror and the LAPD misses the mark. We made him, he's our guy, we gave him a parade and cheered him for slaughtering Muslims, so we shouldn't act so self-righteous when he comes home and starts murdering Americans.

Owning A Gun Is Not An Accomplishment. It Is A Failure.

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Owning a gun is not an accomplishment. It's a failure.


Gun owners are so self-absorbed and unfortunately misinformed about the constitution that they think owning a gun is the same as being named Jesus Christ, back for a second trip. Owning a gun is not the most elevated form of citizenship. Anyone whose idea of citizenship is that they are ready and willing to murder their neighbors is not my idea of a good community member.

Gun owners claim, preposterously and without any authority, that we, the other people who live in this country, are forbidden to regulate or restrict gun ownership. They are ignorant and wrong. Just because the constitutions refers to certain rights of citizens, that does not in any way mean the government cannot regulate or restrict the exercise of those rights.

People have the right to travel, yet we have extensive regulations on the subject. If you drive a car, the government can require you to wear a seat belt because the rest of us are the ones who have to scrape up your idiot bodies from the freeway if you get in a wreck. The government also can set and enforce speed limits, for the same reasons. They create driving laws so we don't have people driving on the left or right side of the street, depending on their moods. All done in the interest of public safety. One of the responsibilities of the government is to protect the public health and safety. When constitution "rights" conflict with the public health and safety, the constitutional "rights" can be regulated.

People have freedom of speech, yet you cannot set up a porn shop next-door to an elementary school because the government can create zones which are porn-free, in the interest of public welfare. You can't scream from a bullhorn at midnight in front of people's homes, because reasonable time place and manner restrictions of speech are allowed, again, for the public safety. People have freedom of religion but if they smoke pot as part of their ceremony, they can be arrested, or if they serve food in a food kitchen to the poor as part of their religious practice, that food service is subject to the health and safety regulations.

I don't like guns. But if somebody wants to own a gun, it's okay with me. As long as they keep it in their house; keep it in a safe; carry liability insurance to compensate me in the event of an accident; meet licensing requirements to show safety compliance and the ability to use the weapon; as long as it is not an assault weapon; as long as there is no one in their home who is a substance abuser or mentally ill. Other than that, I don't really care.

But I am sick to death of gun owners acting as if they are great patriots when the truth is they generally are just bullies who are afraid of their own shadow, paranoid, racists, and like to use violence or the threat of violence to compensate for their obvious inadequacies. As the saying goes.

You want to be a tough guy? Go take care of someone who is seriously ill. Go help people who are out of options, sleeping on the streets, and hungry. You want to be a tough guy? Go to an elementary school and offer to be the cross-walk guard, or monitor during recess, or read to children who need help with reading. Or go to a nursing home and help the old people, do something nice.

Owning a gun is not an accomplishment -- it's more a sign of a lack of will, compassion, or decency. The mere fact that someone embraces the idea of murdering others is a failure of morality on all counts.

Another dependent freeloading loser against Romney.

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I am another freeloading loser living in a house, eating food, going to the doctors, victim of Wall Street and hedge fund financial fraud -- proudly part of the 47% of the country despised by Republicans -- militantly responsible for my own life and my own vote -- and I won't be voting for Mitt Romney or any other Republican.

A secret recording of Mitt Romney has just been released to the delight of democrats.  It shows that idiot talking to a bunch of his rich friends, donors to his campaign, white Republicans who despise the rest of us.  Romney unloads on the unwashed masses, 47% of the nation who he calls, essentially, freeloaders and losers.  My kind of people.

Happy 100th Birthday Gene Kelly, R.I.P. (8/23/1912 - 2/2/1996)

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Gene Kelly, son of James Patrick Joseph Kelly. Known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen. Indeed, a good looking and talented man.

The American Film Institute named Gene Kelly #15 on its list of the Greatest Male Stars of All Time. This scene from Singing in the Rain is a film classic.

Here's a great shot from that classic scene:

Here's another great Gene Kelly performance, from the movie Summer Stock. A bare floor, some newspaper, and magic:

Gene Kelly was a progressive who believed in helping the poor and standing up for the rights of citizens. In 1947, he was part of the Committee for the First Amendment, a delegation from Hollywood which flew to Washington D.C. to protest the hearings of the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC).

Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra appeared in three films together, which was a great opportunity for singing, dancing and some fun acting. In this scene from On The Town, they perform the famous song "New York New York" (it's a fabulous town, the Bronx is up and the Battery's down):   

 
Gene Kelly did serve in the Navy during World War II, but he did not serve overseas.  Because of his movie star talent, he was thought to be more valuable at home boosting morale and selling war bonds.  The public got used to seeing Kelly in a navy uniform in his movies, and he served in the Navy in real life.

An American in Paris is considered by many to be a perfect film. Gene Kelly discovered his co-star Leslie Caron in Paris, and brought her to the U.S. to be in the film. Kelly did most of the choreography for all his films, but the dance scenes in this one are particularly beautiful.

An American in Paris is a story about a young American artist (Gene Kelly) who meets a young beautiful Parisian (Leslie Caron) and falls in love. The music is is from George Gershwin's masterpiece of the same name. In this scene Kelly sings and dances to Gershwin's song "I Got Rhythm":  
 

Happy Birthday Gene Kelly, and thanks for the dance.