tvashtarkatena

This weather compels some things to undress: The himalayan birch up the street

Willi bringing home his own provisions

Well, Cheney's veracity on any subject is a bit 'suspect' these days, but I don't doubt that some members of Congress were less surprised than others when the NYT came out with the domestic spying story. Congress has not been a good steward of our constitution during the Bush years, but it was Bush that came up with the program to begin with. After all, it was Congress who voted to unburden ourselves of the right of habeaus corpus, the ability to try telecom companies that grossly and illegally violate our privacy laws, and on and on....Where there are leaders, there are always followers. The president has tremendous power to set the tone of governance and guide the actions of congress. Hopefully, Obama will send a strong message that our constitution is the core of what it means to be an American and thus something to be proud of, not an inconvenience to be circumvented on the road to unchecked power. The ACLU is asking Pres elect Obama to do three things by executive order on Day 1 of taking office (in addition to a host of other things afterward): Order Guantanamo closed and the prisoners tried or released in a safe manner. Order the end of Extraordinary Rendition. Order the end of torture by our government.

Whether or not other parties violate Article 3 is irrelevant. We, as a nation, are bound by rule of law and morality to abide by the following: ARTICLE 3 In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions: (1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed ' hors de combat ' by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; © outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. (2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for. An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict. The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention. The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict. Thus, the 'waterboarding debate' and all the other discussions of what is 'OK' to do to detainees and what is not are bullshit. All of it has been clearly prohibited by our laws from Day 1. There are still over 250 people who've never been charged with any crime being tortured at Quantanamo as I write this. We don't know who those people are, why they're rotting in our prison, and whether or not they pose any threat to our nation. Disgusting.

This isn't the forum to impart a more complete understanding of the development of 'UEC' status, but, I'll try to put out some crib notes. Unlawful Enemy Combatant status, in the current sense, was wholly a Bush administration invention. Bush took a WWII differentiation between innocents and combatants (necessary when operating in areas populated by civilians) and bastardized it into an excuse to strip a human beings of all of their human rights without due process via misuse of the power of executive order. In addition, there can be no 'implication' that Common Article 3 of the Geneva conventions 'does not apply', as it explicitly prohibits mistreatment, including humiliation, of any captured combatant anywhere, anytime. As a ratified treaty, Article 3 is not a 'guideline', but federal law. As I'm sure you're aware, the Supreme Court has already rejected this 'implication of non-application' argument.

Movements or memes or whatever you'd like to call them are, each and every one, nothing more than an invention by an individual that became popular. History is simply the story of individual humans interacting with each other and the natural world. It's only after the fact that we can begin to carve it into larger, smoother chunks and place it into properly labeled boxes for convenient storage.

Hey, I'm trying to organize my rock collection over here. Is a dirt clod igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary?

The system is not greater than the individual. In many cases, and the Bush presidency is a classic example, the individual creates the system. If we agree that the rule of law is 'a system', and that the Constitution is a central part of that system, then Bush certainly and repeatedly circumvented that system, primarily through Executive Orders. He simply ignored it. He was not 'forced' by any system to do so; they were executed completely at his discretion. (Assuming that we can agree that myth of a 'puppet president' is just another progressive masturbation fantasy). History is full of similar examples. 'Systems' are, by nature, static. They are continually challenged in a dynamic world by the unpredictability of individual action.

If we just took individual humans out of these situations, we could properly pit 'meme' against 'meme' in a purely virtual fashion. So much more intellectually tidy.

Not all the items in the cartoon, but certainly most of them. Anything having to do with raping the Constitution, Iraq, and our national failure re: Katrina can be traced directly back to Bush's actions. Inaction on the part of Congress does nothing to mitigate or spread the blame here. As for the economic stuff, that's more a product of Republican inspired deregulation, cronyism, and the elevation of greed to a virtue. Bush didn't invent it, he just ran with to the best of his abilities. Incredibly, Bush is just now admitting that he 'might' have made some mistakes. Even more incredibly, Cheney still professes that they did the right thing every step of the way. The final blame in all of this rests with the ignorance and apathy of the American voter: those who put these spoiled frat boys in power, and those who failed to prevent them from taking power by either voting for some fringe totalitarian like Nader or by staying home on election day. There are those cynics among us who blame 'the system' for our troubles. Capitalism, American democracy, the two party system, the song and dances vary, but the point is the same. It's not 'individuals' who are to blame, but 'isms'. Um...bullshit. Our system is as good as any. It works to stem totalitarianism, perhaps too late, but what human run system does exactly the right thing without consequences? Individuals ARE to blame for the massive, tragic failures of this administration. Those who made the decisions, those who stood by and let them be made without opposition, and those who voted for all of it. Individuals ARE the system.

Feaux cowboy trying to do a man's job.

Results. As does a lab monkey.

Situation grim. Greenwood Safeway completely out of donuts due to broken water pipe. They offered to frost some bagels for me, but I declined. I feel it's important to clutch onto the veneer of civilization until the bitter end. Long lines at checkout; a sea of blank faces resigned to the frozen death that awaits them. Michelle Obama's ex is telling all, but who could CARE at a time like this?

Human beings as units of production. Not very interesting, and not very new, but there it is. What exactly is it that you produce, Mr. Fairweather?

I threw the severed frozen hand in the freezer. Does anyone know if it's OK to throw it in the Yard Waste bin? Oh, I know gas is down, but does anyone want a Prius? There are plenty of them scattered about, but you might have to chop the frozen corpses out of them before it warms up again.

Itty Bitty Poontitty

The looting has begun. I just saw a man trailing a toilet paper roll with milk running down his leg die in front of a sliding bus. Soon, the shooting. A frozen corpse chunk just shattered the kitchen window. A woman's hand, still clutching the iPhone that couldn't save her, lies still on the cutting board. Worse; it's my veggie and bread cutting board. Oh well, at least I'll have a hole to shoot out of. KIRO advises to stop feeding your pets so that they die before you do. Think about the alternative.

The bodies are piling up like cord wood here. People smothered in their sleep by pets, asphyxiated by camp stoves, struck down by skate skiers. Emotionally, I'm devastated. Hasn't the value of my house suffered enough? The walls are closing in. Can't take it anymore. I'm going out for a drive to see if I can be of help.

Be advised: frozen corpses explode when struck by thundersnow . Wear an appropriate outer layer.

I've been harvesting wallets and iPhones from frozen corpses all morning.

KIRO reports that we'll all be dead by midnight. Commence drinkin and fuckin.

THUNDERSNOW !!!!!

A cyclist who does not also drive a car likely pays no property or business taxes either. He or she is also, possibly, a heavily taxpayer-subsidized student. Ok, he likely pays sales tax on that Big Gulp that he buys down the street from campus. A pittance, really. His parasitic social standing remains. aside from the more than a few unsupportable assumptions here, since when are students 'parasites'? I thought one of the biggest problems in this country was that students were struggling to afford the higher education they need to survive in this minimum wage society, you know, the kind of affordability and subsidies that FW enjoyed when he was a student. I've never heard anyone, ever, before now complain that students are not paying enough taxes. That's so out of touch with what's happening, and what should happen, in this country that, well, you heard it hear first, folks. Perhaps students should also pay for FW's new sidewalk? In addition, I hardly think that a guy who buys beer for his dog should be concerned about which beverages students are consuming these days.

Rock shoes. No, that would be too cruel.

Dude looks like a lady.