pure madness

the media and the politicians in washington, d.c. are having pure madness right now; that’s not to say that they weren’t loons all along, but it is just more obvious now. first of all, the media is saying hillary clinton is practically guaranteed the democratic nomination for president in 2008. real democrats oppose her, however. there are polls that show her far ahead of any other potential nominee among the millions of people who happen to be registered as democrats, but really, who cares about the opinions of the unwashed masses? the unwashed masses are simply the media’s brainwashing victims who repeat back the talking points they heard on tv. of course they say they would support hillary clinton as the front-runner, because they heard on tv that she would be the front-runner, and these people are all sheeple, bandwagon-jumper-onners who lack any real opinions of their own. the “news” media are basically a bunch of hacks, lunatics, idiots, and the rare occasional actual good reporter. now, do we real democrats believe any of the nasty conspiracy theories about the clintons, or have anything against them because of their personal lives, or stuff like that? hells no! the only beefs we have with the clintons are 1) their right-wing, anti-progressive policies (e.g. welfare “reform”, censorship, pro-iraq-war, pro-patriot-act, anti-flag-burning, anti-palestinian) 2) their strange bedfellows like bill clinton’s former top adviser dick morris or hillary’s new buddy rupert murdoch (both men are pure dagnasty evil) 3) their negative baggage that makes them very unpopular with certain voters we would like to win over. overall, if you compare hillary clinton to other washington politicians, she is definitely on the liberal side of the spectrum, though by no means a radical or anything remotely out of the centrist mind trap. on the majority of issues, she actually has the right positions, but of course, progressives and real democrats like to have people who represent as much of their beliefs as possible, and on several major issues, she has abandoned her own party’s base and embraced the views of the ruling party. while this is an unfortunate development, it does not mean that she is beyond repair and that we should get rid of her; it just means we should probably wait longer and see what happens. sometimes it takes a while for politicians to develop the courage to take the right stands on important issues, if they think it might make them less popular or “electable”. while i usually agree with most of the things posted in the comments on huffingtonpost.com blog entries, and i certainly sympathize with the people who are vehement in their hatred of hillary clinton as a neocon sellout, i also sympathize with her side of the story too, having to act very carefully about what she says. i think the media often tends to bully politicians into taking ridiculous positions, by how they portray issues and brainwash the public to manipulate everyone and thereby change the results of public opinion polls. the media probably helped brainwash congress into approving the war in iraq, and they have had a similar role brainwashing congress into accepting the nsa spying on american citizens. first the media brainwashes the public, and then politicians have to do what the public wants, even though the public are mostly sheep/idiots. individually, of course, people are much more intelligent, but, taken as a large group, the intelligence level decreases, due to group psychology and the herd mentality. anyway, my point is, while hillary clinton is nowhere near perfect, and just barely acceptable, if that, i will probably vote for her anyway, since at least she isn’t as awful as joe lieberman (ugh!).

and some more of this pure madness is with regard to the senate confirming general michael hayden as cia director, and failing to do anything about the nsa wiretapping scandal, such as impeaching the president (or at least censuring him like russ feingold modestly proposed). so, congress has nothing against having the government spy on us. but then, when some moron who works at veterans affairs brings the personal info of 26 million veterans home and then gets it stolen from his house, suddenly congress cares about our privacy all of a sudden? fucking hypocrites. they think it is perfectly fine for the government to spy on everyone, but for some two-bit house thief to have access to the same data the government has, suddenly that’s a huge danger to the public safety. well excuse me uncle sam, but if you cannot secure your fucking computer networks to keep your data from falling into the wrong hands, maybe you shouldn’t be spying on all of us and keeping all of the data in your crappy insecure networks. i know of countless ways to hack the shit out of a computer and get all its data; there are a million ways to do it and there is no way in hell you clowns can protect against all of them so you might as well not collect the damn data in the first place. if you really want good i.t. security for your networks... well... you would have to monitor everything that anybody does at a computer, with video cameras. and it would be quite hard to have good security on microsoft windows-based systems; it is so complicated, and good security in microsoft windows requires the user’s active and positive cooperation with security software such as antivirus, antispyware, antitrojan, antiworm, and firewall programs, along with a proactive stance against dangerous activities like opening email attachments and downloading software. in unix-based operating systems, things are much different, and it is probably easier to have security, but if the entire government switched to some unix-based operating system like linux, freebsd, or mac os x, there would surely be great interest by hackers and the people who write spyware and viruses and trojans and worms. in any event, it is necessary that the computer users are all trustworthy individuals who are not enemy spies or criminals from organized crime or disgruntled misanthropes. no computer with classified or highly sensitive information should ever be connected to the internet, nor should any of these computers have usb enabled. disabling usb means no usb thumb drives can work; also, the computers need to have the cases physically locked shut to prevent people from messing around inside. the rom bios needs to be password-protected. the boot order must be hard drive first, and not allow for booting from a floppy or a cd or anything else. the operating system must be password-protected, and not allow for pressing f8 to bring up a menu, or for safe mode or anything like that. the “administrator” account should be renamed, have a really hard-to-guess password, and be disabled. and only very high-ranking i.t. personnel should have administrative access to any of the computers. all computers would have to have automatic updates enabled and to do everything automatically without asking the user anything. these are just the minimal security requirements; surely there is some weak point i did not think of, and any such weak points would also have to be addressed. and since that is so impossible, and it is only a matter of time before the nsa’s data leaks out like the veterans affairs data did, the government ought to mind its own fucking business.

but congress has reached new heights of insanity and depravity. democratic congressman william jefferson of louisiana is under investigation for corruption and taking bribes in exchange for official acts. the fbi raided his office lawfully after obtaining a warrant from a judge. and now the speaker of the house, the republican dennis hastert, and house democratic leader nancy pelosi, along with house judiciary committee chairman james sensenbrenner, these and other congressional leadership types from both parties are all singing the same tune, the same tune of being completely fucking out of touch with america and thinking they are above the damn law. news flash to congress: you are not above the law! if you commit a crime, you can go to jail. if a judge issues a warrant, they can search your office. this is how law and order works. you dipshits are supposed to understand this! and now you are all presenting yourselves as anti-corruption crusaders? yeah fucking right. i know the real reason congressional leadership wants to cover william jefferson’s ass. guess what: they know they are next. that’s right: the justice department is doing a massive investigation into criminal activity by lobbyists and members of congress, and jack abramoff, tom delay, bob ney, duke cunningham, and william jefferson are just the tip of the iceberg. congress has got to establish some kind of court ruling or precedent or tradition that says that it is above the law and the justice department doesn’t get to go around looking through congressional offices for evidence of criminal activity. now, certainly, there ought to be separation of powers, and the legislative branch has been weakened lately and the executive strengthened, in the 6 years of bush ii. but the legislative branch’s decline was its own doing; republican committee chairmen chose not to do any oversight or investigations into the bush administration. they allowed the executive branch to claim absolute power, to turn the president into a king. but now, when the legislators personally feel threatened, because they are afraid of being implicated in a massive corruption probe, they suddenly find their constitutions and remember the importance of separation of powers? what hypocrisy! and such me-tooism! instead of telling bush he isn’t above the law by censuring or impeaching him, they are asking the justice department to make them above the law just like president bush! well guess what suckers? you can’t have that many people all be above the law at once! you’ll have chaos! there is no way anyone should even consider letting congress be above the law. congress is only above the law in one sense, which does make sense to be preserved: people in congress can say whatever they want on the floor of the house or senate, and not be held responsible for any criminal or civil penalties for doing so. people in congress don’t have to be worrying about lawsuits if they say something that isn’t true about someone else. now, i think this particular protection makes sense. but, no protection for taking bribes makes sense, nor should congressional offices be off-limits to the fbi. making something off-limits to law enforcement is asking for trouble, almost guaranteeing that they will be hotbeds for illegal activity. just check out this quote from msnbc.com: “there is nothing unusual or illegal about a defense contractor with an open checkbook for campaign fund-raisers and seats to fill on a corporate jet.” you know what? MAYBE THERE SHOULD BE. you know my solution to this kind of corruption? shoot everyone involved in the head at point blank range. problem solved. our judicial system is too damn slow, just look how long it took to get ken lay and jeff skilling convicted. who needs evidence, anyway? let’s just give guns to the news reporters who know who the corrupt people are, and let them kill whoever they want without any punishment, and i guarantee you that very quickly, things would be a helluva lot less corrupt in our nation’s capital. let’s have a coup d’etat in THIS country, and show our dear leaders what they have been doing to all the other countries of the world. maybe a military dictator might be the only way to wake people in this country up and make them realize that something is horribly wrong, since most people seem to bury their heads in the sand and pretend our democracy is somehow functional or actually represents the common people somehow instead of just corrupt special interests. and let’s thank great britain for being complicit in our war crimes for so many years (for example, try and guess what happened to the original inhabitants of diego garcia). and if you think THAT’S bad, guess what happened to the people who lived on the island of bikini atoll? you don’t wanna know, but it has something to do with the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated. it seems like you can do pretty much anything to pacific islanders and get away with it... too few of them to fight back.

and guess what some of our beloved soldiers, our troops, the ones we all support so much, did? they shot and killed about 24 innocent iraqis in some small town in iraq last year, in cold blood. and the whole thing is well-documented and our own government is actually acknowledging it took place, and it’s worse than abu gharaib. these marines who killed the innocent civilians... these are not troops that i support. i do not support the troops. i support the civilians, the ones who are unarmed. i support the human rights of civilians not to be shot and killed arbitrarily, or blown up by bombs, or beheaded. are there any troops i support? probably. i think so. but only if they follow the “rules of engagement” to the letter, and hold their fire against innocent civilians. and i think most soldiers on the ground probably do not go around killing innocent civilians. airplane pilots, on the other hand... they can drop bombs and shoot missiles, impersonally sending bombs from far away. i do not support their butchery. they are simply told to shoot various “targets”, without knowing who or what is there, and expected to obey orders, which they do. and what is the result? innocent civilians die from this, quite often. it is usually called “collateral damage” or some other misnomer that hides the nature of this brutal massacre. still, we cannot really hold the pilots themselves responsible, since they would face quite harsh punishment if they refused to follow orders. in the end, the civilian leadership of the military is responsible; they are the ones who have committed war crimes. the military itself are simply the hapless pawns of the civilian leadership and don rumsfeld, although this does not absolve the military of all of its crimes. but how can we judge whether this was simply individuals committing war crimes, or an entire institution? who is really to blame? the idea of holding an institution itself responsible is ridiculous, because an institution such as the united states military is simply a set of individual human beings, along with various other things that are part of the institution. but really, certain people in this institution of the military are responsible for the bad things, and other people are honorably trying to do their job as best they can. most of the soldiers are good people. but they are in a bad situation, it makes them desperate and feel in danger, and this can make good people go bad, and commit atrocities. we must really examine this phenomenon more closely in order to establish who is truly guilty of these crimes, and what the chain of causality that led to them is. it is an encouraging sign that the u.s. government will be prosecuting those soldiers who took part in this particular massacre that is in the news. but how many other massacres were there that we didn’t hear about? and who created the conditions that led to this massacre occuring in the first place? this is the real madness. for most of our troops, i still think we should give them the benefit of the doubt, and treat them as heroes, for theirs is a thankless task, fighting a losing war in a dangerous and chaotic nation. but as we do this, we must never forget that among our military there are those who have spilt the blood of the innocent on purpose and not been punished. that is why honoring them as heroes is even more important. it may spur some of them who have guilty consciences to confess their crimes, after thinking about how they are undeserving of all of the praise. and for the ones who did nothing wrong, this will help their emotional stability after all of the traumatic experiences of war. we ought to appreciate those who did their job right, to send a message to those who did it wrong. and we should also show our support for the innocent civilians of the countries we invade, the ones who die because of the misguided bloodlust of a small percentage of our soldiers. one way to show our support for them would be to ban depleted uranium from being used in war. because the use of depleted uranium munitions is, quite simply, yet another example of pure madness, and it is a crime against humanity. it gives people cancer and other diseases, polluting the environment for many years with dangerous radioactive toxins. unfortunately, the politicians in washington don’t seem to care about this issue, and they accept the pentagon lies about depleted uranium being safe. craziness. all i know is, as strange as it may sound, alberto gonzales, bush’s attorney general who wrote the pro-torture memo, is now suddenly a hero in my book, because he is standing on principle in saying that congress is not above the law, and if congress succeeds in making itself above the law, he has pledged to resign in protest, along with his deputy attorney general and the fbi director. alberto gonzalez may not usually be on the right side of the issues, but on this one he is truly standing up for what is right, so he ought to be praised for belatedly finding the light. if me praising alberto gonzales is not madness, i don’t know what is.