call for freedom

Juan Cole (Informed Consent) states clearly in defense of legalization of marajuana:

It turns out that if we had more personal freedoms, we'd have more state monies and could educate ourselves to develop our potential as free human beings.

In the past 40 years, the snowball has been going in the other direction-- fewer personal freedoms, a vast gulag of the incarcerated, and less and less state money for the development of the minds of the public. We've built ourselves a big ignorant prison, with a loud-mouthed fundamentalist preacher for a warden, and called it America.

We should legalize pot, and tax the resulting industry. We should repeal mandatory sentencing guidelines and develop rehabilitation strategies rather than putting the ill-behaved in expensive state hotels. And we should go back to having state-funded state universities.

Time For Change...

Noam Chomsky says to produce change we need understanding, organizing, and action.

It's time to focus or we'll get the wrong change...

Alaskans for Obama

http://www.politicalcartoons.com/cartoon/6a692238-0fa1-4dec-952b-06dc92c4a6ab.html

FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

Blackwater 2.0: 'Operator Disneyland' ??

http://www.military.com/news/article/blackwater-2-0-operator-disneyland.html

""It's a Disneyland for operators," said Blackwater founding member and current president Gary Jackson during an August 22 tour of the company's grounds. "They come here and they just can't believe it."

With an array of firing ranges, shoot houses, an aviation support fleet and a roster of trainers capable of delivering instruction on any kind of martial skill known to man, Blackwater has become a juggernaut in the world of private military companies.

Originally founded as a training and target manufacturing company, Blackwater has launched a media offensive to shake off its reputation among critics as a "shoot-first-ask-questions-later" band of bearded mercenaries. Two high-profile incidents in Iraq propelled the normally secretive company onto America's front pages, and the news wasn't good"

From BlueNC blog:

"A primer on the mercenary madness, here's a summary from Blackwater Watch.

Blackwater Worldwide, a mercenary group, has a history of killing innocent civilians. In Nisour Square, Iraq, on September 16, 2007, Blackwater “security personnel” shot and killed without provocation seventeen Iraqis civilians, including a nine year old boy.

Blackwater has taken no responsibility for any of the killings. Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, told Congress one month after the Nisour Square Massacre that he had no knowledge of his men hurting innocent civilians.

Blackwater is not part of the military! It is a business that profits from bloodshed and killing. Its personnel are not accountable to military, civil, or criminal law. One year after the killings, no one at Blackwater has been charged for any of the killings of innocent civilians.

Blackwater used subsidiary business names to apply for its building permits in San Diego to avoid the normal permit process and avoid public scrutiny. Blackwater has done everything in their power to stop the right of the San Diego City Council, the City Attorney, and San Diego residents to say “no” to having Blackwater here, including suing the City of San Diego.

Blackwater is a company that profits from conflict. NO CONFLICT = NO PROFIT! Blackwater mercenaries along the US-Mexico border will seek to profit from border instability. Any minor difference among ethnic groups can easily be exploited by Blackwater mercenaries to intervene and make money.'

And It could get Worse...

From Talking Points Memo

Is It True?

Will the McCain as trigger-happy hothead work? I suggest a different calculus. Is it true? I would suggest that it definitely is, both in personal temperament and policy prescriptions. And I believe that is the better metric, both practically speaking and morally.

Morally, the case is pretty straightforward. McCain really is a hothead. Everyone seems to agree that's true on an interpersonal level. But I don't really care about that. I don't care who he swears at. But over his time in the senate and now as would-be president, he's shown a tendency always to jump to the most confrontational and military-based responses to foreign events, often to almost ridiculous levels. And I think because of that temperament, he's fallen in with and become a useful tool of the DC neoconservatives who view acting crazy and getting people killed as a matter of principle.

I've watched the Bush presidency very closely. I've watched McCain closely for the last decade or so. And I either know or know a decent amount about a lot of the people advising him on foreign policy. And in terms of the physical safety and future of my wife and two sons, let alone the country, I would much prefer four more years of the Bush presidency to a McCain presidency.

The pragmatic reasoning follows from the moral. People speak and argue much more coherently about things they believe in their bones, things that are true. And people with open minds are much more inclined to believe things that are ... well, true, rather than cooked up for maximum polling advantage. In any case, it's very difficult to know what will and won't 'work' in the abstract and in advance. Going with the truth is a more reliable guide.

--Josh Marshall

England's Rock Art: ERA Home

http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/era/

Mr. Deity and the Help Meet - Season 2, Ep 9

From Crackle: Mr. Deity and the Help Meet - Season 2, Ep 9

Mr. Deity and the Limbo - Season 2, Ep 7

From Crackle: Mr. Deity and the Limbo - Season 2, Ep 7