This book is blurbed by both Rachel Maddow and Michael Moore. Any easy pass, right? Not so quick.

The author, Glenn Greenwald, is a former constitutional lawyer who puts his principles first, instead of party affiliation. Read his blogs here. He slams the 'Phants as often as the Donks.

His book makes a clear case that American is becoming (became?) an oligarchy. That penalties for criminal activities is literally only for politically unconnected people anymore. Starting with Nixon's pardon, Greenwald makes the case that accountability and the rule of law is no longer what America's government stands for.

If you're like me, you barely noticed when the telecoms were given retroactive immunity by congress, under Bush, for their role in facilitating government spying on its own citizens. Perhaps because so little was made of it at the time. Few front page headlines and no federal judges throwing the law out.

To prevent terrorism, we're told. Spying for terrorism's sake today, spying for political gain, tomorrow?

What Greenwald does is put this legislation in context: years before, Senator Frank Church (et al) instituted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (1978); in part, to put the telecoms (of the day) on notice that they would be prosecuted for providing an overweening government with surveillance without judicial oversight. More specifically, making the penalties so onerous that Americans would be safe from having their own government spy on them, because quisling telecoms would go to jail.

Enter the Bush era. Telecoms perform as the get-away driver for the robbery of our privacy, and then they get the very same Mafioso to excuse them. Kind of like when Nixon said that burglary and cover-up isn't illegal if the president does it. He could just as easily been trying to legitimize illegal surveillance. The law is only the law if everyone is subject to it.

Nothing is stopping the government now.

Because, as Greenwald forthrightly states, the powerful no longer go to jail. Our government is no longer a kept genie in its bottle. The Constitution is just a piece of paper to be rewritten as circumstances warrant by the elite.

This lawlessness has only escalated under Obama. From waging war without congressional authorization, extrajudicial killings of American citizens, a reign of terror upon whistle blowers, this president has used the cloak of national security to wield unencumbered power with minimal murmurs of dissent from the judiciary or the fourth estate.

Only Greenwald, with his impeccable credentials, a man who evinces everything the principled Left believes in, can speak with authority about this democratic President's wrongdoing. And his predecessors.

Read this book. Read his blog.

Today, I'm going to fuck up a banker's day. Really.

It all started when a ten thousand dollar check was intercepted and cashed. My money. How a check with my company's name on it was allowed to be cashed by an individual (Bank 101: what not to fucking do) should have been the first of many acknowledged embarrassments by BoA. But, no...

Instead, they doubled down on suck.

First, they harassed my office with, 'Do you know this person?' 'Or this one?'

No. We don't know any criminal types. Only fool bankers.

Then a high-handed threat: Pasquin, you have exactly two hours to call if you want your money.

I did; they didn't.

Think about this. By calling, BoA has conceded that they owe me the money. By setting a deadline, they have conceded they are dicks.

So, today, I will withdraw all my money from Bank of Iwantmorebailouts. Perhaps roll in it, Scrooge McDuck-style. Then find another bank.

Will they miss it? Maybe not.

But they won't miss the dogs of law I will unleash. Arrogant incompetency tastes like steak underwear. Wear it, Brian Moynihan.

Points if you know what this art represents.

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
Victor Hugo

"He who opens a school door, enters a prison."
Pasquin





Quick, is this a school or prison? Hard to tell, first glance. But there are ways to tell the difference, right?



Dude, that's so stupid. In prison, you're forced to stay there until the judge lets you out.



Just try escaping school before sixteen (Eighteen if Obama gets his way). A man with a uniform will come to your home and take you away.



But prison has guards and guns and stuff.



Have you been to an urban school? Security guards and metal detectors.



Schools are for learning.



Prisons are for rehabbing. Semantics.



That's stupid. If they were the same, they'd do the same things.



Like obsess about searching for drugs and weapons entering their facility? They don't do that at Disney World. Or anywhere else people aren't FORCED to go.

Quote all you want about how education leads to better outcomes, but turning government schools in to pre-prisons is not the way. Why is it perverse that prison owners are for tougher laws, meaning higher incarceration levels and profits, and not when government schools have the same incentives?

A teenager, with a mom struggling to pay bills and wipe snotty toddler noses, may choose family over a school day that involves two film strips, study hall, and review algebra. That's rational. Making him a criminal solves nothing.

The answer isn't to toughen the schools, it is to make school more pertinent. Remove the government monopoly on education and see enrollment go up without a swat team.

Even though it is only showing in Berlin, Germany. Anyone up for a trip? I'll spring for the popcorn.

Bridge Troll: Stop. Who would cross the Bridge of Debate must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see. First Question: What is your name?



What would you like to call me?



Maggie Thatcher, William Wallace, Moses, you know, any historical figure made into a major motion picture.


Jesus.


Bridge troll: Next Question...



Hey, what about me?


Bridge Troll: What is your Quest?



To become President. Please.


Become a transformational figure. Revolutionary. I want to shift the whole planet. Maybe out of orbit. See if I care.


Jesus.

Bridge Troll: Last question...



Yoo hoo!


Bridge Troll: What is your favorite color?



What's yours?


It's you media elites, with your questions and insisting on answers from public servants, that's the problem with America today.


Jesus.

Bridge Troll: You may pass.




Blue! It's blue!

(over the phone)

Dickhead: (employee name ) owes my client money. Give me a way to get a hold of him.
Me: No.
Dickhead: I know your customers. Their addresses. I'd hate to have to go looking for him.
::looks up Dickhead's address::
Me: And I'd hate to have to come down to XXX Mass Ave, Allston, looking for you.
Dickhead: Would you do that?
Me: Try me.

Ron Paul displays the moral idiocy of someone who declares that a person who pushes a little old lady out of the path of a bus is just as bad as a person who pushes a little old lady into the path of a bus, because both are equally guilty of pushing little old ladies around.

Well, Michael Lind, a government that pushes a little old lady out of the path of a bus, or into it, is STILL PUSHING A LITTLE OLD LADY AROUND. Moral idiocy indeed.

You betray your statist inclinations. That people can't protect themselves, they need to be leashed and shoved by their owners into proper choices.

Get your goddamned hands off my grandma. Shouldn't government instead be race-screening bus drivers, upping their fees, and installing old-lady-catchers on the fronts of all Greyhounds, because they just might shove some geriatric under them?

No, Michael, the answer is to get rid of the man shoving people. Period.

PSA:  Salon.com will not allow commenters unless they pay for the privilege or link to social media they can then spam.

Fuck that.

More than one in three women have experienced sexual assault, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey.

Holy crap, that sounds terrible. One in three? That sounds AWFULLY high, don't you think?

That's because it's nonsense.

Check out these Orwellian misuses of the phrases sexual assault and stalking.

From the survey questions:
Q: Kissed you in a sexual way (but you didn't want them to?)
Hell, it ain't a Saturday night out if that doesn't happen.

Q: How many people have you had vaginal, oral, or anal sex with after they pressured you by…doing things like telling you lies, making promises about the future they knew were untrue, threatening to end your relationship, or threatening to spread rumors about you?
Well, those are all dick maneuvers, but sexual VIOLENCE? Pisspot.

Q: Has someone [worn] you down by repeatedly asking for sex, or showing they were unhappy?
Apparently all married men are sexual predators.

Q: Has someone left you unwanted messages? This includes text or voice messages.
That means anyone with an instant messenger has been stalked.

Q: It's expressive aggression if...someone told you that no one else would want you?
Isn't this what every woman says when you break up with them? Or is it just me?

This is just a sampler of the bullshit. To lump all of these behaviors in with genuine evils like beatings, rape, and pathologically controlling behavior cheapens the ordeal that some men and women go through.

There's no way you can take this survey and not come out being labeled a victim. I defy you to try. According to this questionnaire, I raped myself. Stolen kisses, kiss my ass!

What this survey establishes isn't that one in three women are raped; it's one in three women experience jerks. And if that hasn't happened to you yet, ladies, you're lucky. And probably in an isolation ward.

Remember, this is from the CDC, the same people who helped you prepare for the Zombie apocalypse. That's what they're good at: hyping fictional evils.