Finally

Remember Shirley Sherrod, whose NAACP speech got edited by Breitbart to make her appear as a reverse-racist?

She finally filed a lawsuit on his sorry ass.

Prepare to watch as Brietbart tries to twist himself in every direction to make himself the victim of all this.  He'll have help, obviously, as his Far Right mongers have to worry that a successful suit against their waves of lie after lie the last twenty years will bring an end to their money-making Machine of Fear.

Breitbart Delendus Est.

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Proof Why Rick Scott Is Gonna Be A Terrible Governor

It's not the damage he's going to do to Florida's schools.  Kinda knew that he was going to destroy public education from Day One.

It's not the damage he's going to do to Florida's environment.  A fragile ecosystem like ours - the threat of drought, water toxicity, etc - was never the concern of conservatives obsessed with land development even in a market incapable of selling new (or even existing) properties.

It's not the damage he's going to do to Florida's social net - the cuts to public employee jobs, killing off service departments, forcibly privatizing services that will actually be MORE EXPENSIVE - in order to justify massive tax cuts to corporations that take everything from the state and GIVE NOTHING BACK.

No.  The proof that Rick Scott is going to be a terrible Governor is how he's ruining the lives in OTHER STATES by seeking to kill a proposed law that would regulate pharmacies by tracking prescription drugs.

Why is this a big deal?

Something called "pill mills".  Thanks to the law, any "pharmacy" in this state can open up to sell medications - pain-killers like Oxycodone - that are perfectly legal but have to be regulated as they are narcotic and deadly when overdosed.  These pill mills create a system where people can come in "claiming" they need pain-killers, get a "doctor" to sign off on a high dosage, and buy them by the hundreds.  The people can then travel to other states that tightly regulate pain-killers and sell the pills on a street corner.  It's hard to arrest a pain-killer seller as the pills ARE legal (you have to prove intent, usually if the dealer is packing tons of the pills).

Florida is currently the nation's primary source of "pill mills".  Thanks to one thing: we currently have no means of tracking prescriptions.  A law passed in 2009 but not yet implemented would do that.  Scott and his pro-business buddies in the State Lege want to kill that law before it even starts, citing it as an "Orwellian" step over our state's medical records.

The problem with allowing these "pill mills" to continue operating is obvious: those pain-killers can be lethal.   There's reportedly seven deaths A DAY in Florida alone.  People get addicted to them pretty quickly too.  And because of their legality (under regulation), pain-killers are easier to get than cocaine and heroin (and maybe even meth).

Scott's excuse that the prescription tracking is "Orwellian" flies in the face of logic.  Other medical records and other prescriptions are tracked all the time.  Considering the massive War On Drugs (with billions spent going after marijuana, one of the least deadly drugs out there), would Scott consider attempts to regulate medical marijuana usage "Orwellian" as well?  Probably not.

Here's Scott's real reason for wanting to kill this regulation:  It's a regulation.  Period.  The Far Right in this country have hate-filled obsessions, one of which is regulations (the others are taxes, Social Security, voting rights, abortion, sex ed, evolution, and freedom marches in other countries).  If there's a regulation on how a business operates, even if that regulation is there to SAVE LIVES, the Far Right wants it gone and gone yesterday.

Here's another reason: Scott's background in medical services.  Not only was he a MASSIVE MEDICARE FRAUD when he ran an HMO, he went on to establish clinics and pharmacies (like Solantic or Pharmaca) to increase his personal wealth.  He's got ties to the state's pharmaceutical industry... an industry that's profiting one way or another from having these "pill mills" stay open.  They profit: he profits.  It's that simple, and that scary.

Forty-two other states have a similar database system in place.  The state office that was supervising it had garnered private grants to begin its funding (it wasn't costing taxpayers much of anything).  There is no reason to oppose such a common-sense program that could well help Florida save millions in law enforcement costs and drug abuse treatments.

Except for one reason: Rick Scott is a greedy-ass crook.  And a terrible governor.

To the 2.5 million Floridians who voted for Scott: I hope your family members are pain-killer addicts.  It's called Karma, enjoy it.

(I know I shouldn't be mean-spirited, but how the hell else you gonna get through to the Far Right how screwed up their priorities and obsessions are?)

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Good Work, Egypt. Just Remember, This Is Round One

President Mubarak of Egypt, after 30 years of authoritarian rule, stepped down from office today.  The country's leadership is pretty much been sacked by the military in a de facto coup (not by overt actions by the military, but by the fact the Egyptian army was the only branch of government still working).

This all happened on what was the 18th day of nationwide protests, following in the wake of Tunisia's popular uprising earlier in January.  The protest themselves ebbed and flowed but never abated.  After Mubarak attempted to send out pro-government thugs into the streets to intimidate both the media and the protesters into fleeing, the protests regained their focus and resolve.

The tipping point had to be last night's speech by Mubarak.  The whole world had come to believe it was going to be an official announcement he would resign.  Instead, Mubarak went into full "I'm Indispensable" Mode that dictators operate from: he insisted he wouldn't leave until September when elections were scheduled, he offered patronizing words about how he had always been so protective and faithful to Egypt, and blamed "outsider" influences on the chaos now wracking the nation.

It was, basically, the most tone-deaf speech in history (well, other than anything Jefferson Davis ever said as President of the Confederacy.  I'd name a few others, but that delves into Godwin territory...).

Mubarak clearly had no grasp of the situation outside his circle of handlers and allies.  The mobs in the streets were overwhelming in their desire to have Mubarak leave office (and even further, leave the country).  Leave as in right now.  Not in September.  Not in six months when he could pretend everything this month never happened and then never leave.  The people of Egypt by 100-to-1 (rough estimates) wanted Mubarak gone.  And he never grasped that basic reality (that link to the New Yorker article highlights how dictators ALWAYS view themselves as so indispensable to nations they forced to love them.)  It had to take a public desertion by a key ally (the head of Mubarak's political party) and most likely a ton of behind-the-scenes shouting matches by the generals to get Mubarak to concede and resign.

And so, the good news: we are bearing witness to one of those rare global moments of pure joy.  I've seen several in my lifetime: the People Power movement of the Philippines, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the balloting of a post-apartheid South Africa, the crowds at Grant Park as Obama won in 2008.  And now this.  Tunisia was the first nation in this wave of Arab uprisings, but that had all happened off-camera (almost no coverage by the West outside of the blogs and social networks).  Egypt, however, is a key Arab nation, and this had been going on for weeks.  Every news channel has a camera on this now, and the images of the joy were a thing of beauty.

Now, here's the rough news.  You guys have to rebuild the nation.

There's a reason, well three or four reasons, you Egyptians rose up in protest.  Mostly due to a bad economy.  High unemployment, high food prices, corrupt business leaders, and additional.  The unemployment crisis in Egypt is worse than the United States (!), with 20somethings struggling to find work.  Poverty is everywhere.

I don't envy whoever has to take charge of Egypt over the next few years.  (I'm thinking the Muslim Brotherhood's promise to not run any candidate for the presidency is a smart, long-term plan.  Whoever takes the job now has the thankless task of fixing everything.  All the Brotherhood has to do is sit back a few years, wait for the frustration to boil, and THEN make a power grab...).  The next President has to get the wealthy of his nation to spread the wealth downward, lessen corruption, increase job growth, lessen poverty conditions, secure more food supplies, and quite possibly guarantee the Egyptian soccer team wins the next World Cup.  Like I said, a thankless and borderline impossible job.

The best suggestion I have to the Egyptian people is this: do not lose sight of the goal.  The goal is an open and just government.  Justice guarantees honest oversight of the economy.  Honest oversight leads to a strong economy.  A strong economy gets you jobs and food on the tables.

The task of building an open and just government is difficult.  And it is ongoing.  The United States is a perfect example.  For all our belief in American Exceptionalism, ours is still a nation in progress.  We only secured the right for women to vote less than 100 years ago.  Blacks and other minorities were discriminated into non-citizen status up until 45 years ago.  We're currently struggling through a deep recession and a jobless recovery the likes of which is hurting millions of families with a poverty rate that's been the highest in decades.

But we work at it.  Every day is a struggle for our political and legal rights.  For as much as we think we are free, we still gotta work for it all the time.  But we believe in the system, from the Constitution on down, we believe that the system works.  It's not a religious belief or a philosophical belief... it just is.  We know we can vote every two or four years for new representatives and changes in leadership, and we hope that things can get fixed.

There's this theory of a cycle of revolution: one-man ruler falls before a democratic committee, which collapses under the rule of a purist who purges all enemies by murder, which victimizes itself until a military leader seizes power, which turns into an autocratic one-man rule (and repeat).  The trick of breaking the cycle is re-imagining what you are doing.  Don't be a revolution (which decays into that cycle of violence).  Be a rebellion (which the American Revolution really was, the throwing off the oppressive yolk of what had become a foreign power so that the nation of states we were meant to be could form).

Be a rebellion, Egypt.  Rebel against the Middle Eastern mindset of kleptocratic, authoritarian rule.  Avoid the mindset of purges: a real democracy respects political opposition as long as all parties have honorable intent.

It's going to be hard work, people.  Freedom is worth it:

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."
--Tom Paine, The Crisis

Good luck with your freedom, Egypt.  It will be hard work.  But it will be worth it.

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My Computer Is DEAD and Other Topics

1) My main box died this morning, and its the motherboard.  Might as well get a new computer.  This is a laptop I'm currently on but it's not built for gaming and DAMMIT I NEED MY CITY OF HEROES FIX.

2) Egypt is erupting into violence as Mubarak finally rallied enough pro-dictator people to show up with whips and bully clubs.  So far, the violence is moderately bad but can get worse.  On the good news side of things, the army seems to be siding with the pro-democracy crowds and trying to disperse the violence-bringing pro-Mubarak thugs.  And the pro-Mubarak seem to be losing...

3) I filled out unemployment extension paperwork today, hopefully means there's a Tier 5 benefits package out there.  The bad news: I'M STILL UNEMPLOYED AND CAN'T AFFORD A NEW COMPUTER.

4) So this means one thing.  Two things actually.

BUY MY BOOK!

And, BUY MY NEW ONLINE STORY!

It's going towards a new gaming box, not drugs I swear...

5) This Onion article explains exactly how the GOP opposes Obama on... well, everything.  Even common sense things like protecting the planet from getting hit with a freaking asteroid...

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If There's One Good Thing About Egypt's Protests

And it's something that's taken some time to comprehend, but I think this is a key fact and something the U.S. and western allies can base their hopes on:

The Egyptians that are protesting are doing so AGAINST President Mubarak and FOR open elections/government.  The one thing they ARE NOT doing is protesting for a mullah-led or theocratic government like what happened in Iran.

They've used prayer as a means of protest, sure.  It's Islam: public praying five times a day toward Mecca is a given, and it's a great way to organize and gather.  But the protesters are NOT gathering around any particular spiritual leader.  There's not a mullah or ayatollah being touted as the Next Great Savior.  They're also leaving F-CK MUBARAK graffiti everywhere, in the honored and storied tradition of ancient Roman wall artists.

The biggest concern is that, yes, the Muslim Brotherhood is the group that has the most to gain if Mubarak gets kicked out.  And the Brotherhood is fundamentalist and way against women rights.  But there are other groups in Egypt, and there is a moderate political opponent (Mohamed ElBaradei) around whom the protesters have rallied (he's a lawyer, international nuclear arms regulator with the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize on his resume). AND the Brotherhood isn't the group that will have a final say... it's actually the military, which profits from U.S. aid and will most likely push for a more moderate government once the revolution ends.

Here's hoping the Egyptian military keeps their word that they will not fire on unarmed and peaceful protesters.  Here's hoping the protesters keep the peace as they speak for their nation's reforms.  Here's hoping Egypt becomes another Turkey and not an Iran.  And here's hoping that when (not if, this isn't North Korea nor China, and the whole world is watching now) Mubarak leaves, the Egyptians' anger towards the U.S. (which has backed Mubarak all these decades in the expediency of international security) abates.

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To Tunisa... To Egypt... To Where

This all started over a fruit cart in Tunisa.

A poor man, struggling to earn some money for his family and for his sisters' educations, unable to get any other work other than selling fruit in the marketplace.  Tunisian economy is pretty rough: rampant unemployment, and political corruption from the top on down where only the powerful get jobs.

Like in a lot of places, you need a permit to sell in the marketplace.  Mohamed Bouazizi couldn't afford either the permit nor the bribes that corrupt local police wanted, and so they kept shutting him down.  On Dec. 17th 2010, they did more than that: they humiliated him.  It drove him to an act of self-immolation: burning himself in front of the government offices that denied him any justice or recourse (He died early January).  To a nation seething under the 23-year rule of a corrupt President-for-life, it was the final straw.

It took a few days, and almost no international notice (outside of the social media sources Twitter, Facebook and others), but the Tunisians overthrew the dictator and are currently in the throes of rebuilding a nation.  God help them and may they succeed in making a more open, less corrupt Tunisa work.

But once President Ben Ali fled to exile, the rest of the Arab world... and the rest of the world period... sat up and took notice.  Because if there's one thing about politics in the Middle East... it's that a lot of the nations are one-person, one-party places.  Places like Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia... I'd mention Iran, but you might notice they've had their own uprising attempt a few years ago and their government is most likely keeping all this stuff off their news as much as possible...

The American understanding of the Middle East has been "there are guys who side with us and those who don't," with our key allies being Israel (with our alliance part of the political turmoil in the Middle East to begin with, and that would take a whole book to discuss), Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.  Turkey is democratic and for the most part solid allies (just don't talk about the Kurds or Armenians).  But it's the protests in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that are gaining U.S. attention... and our concerns.

Especially as the Egyptian protests ratchet up and as President Mubarak is doing what he can to clamp down.

The problem is Islamic fundamentalism.  Primarily the reactionary elements that oppose Westernized culture (the openness of sex, vulgarity, and jazz/blues/rap/country music) and values (gender equality).  They also have a few issues with Israel (basically its right to even exist), and a few geopolitical extremists who are still upset about how the spread of Islam stopped at the Spanish and Bosnian borders.

Most of our allies in the Arab world are led by Westernized Muslims (that is, they're willing to do business with us and allow American tourists to take snapshots of everybody).  Problem is, those nations have small but very-well-organized extremist terror groups who would love nothing more than to blow everybody up, drive out the non-Muslims, take over their governments, install religious law (based on a twisted reading of the Quran, and not on actual justice or human rights), and pretty much become as corrupt as the one-party rulers they're trying to throw out (SEE Iran 1979 to now).  As a result, those American allies tended to rule by fiat, becoming dictators and staging rigging elections to maintain the status quo.  You get extremes at both ends, with the majority population screwed by both sides.  It's been quiet until now: the global economic meltdown of the last decade has hurt, with a lot of Arab nations suffering high unemployment and food prices inflation.  Now, the masses of the Middle East are out of money and beginning to starve: they have nothing to lose if they take to the streets...

In Tunisa, the ruling party was relatively successful in exiling their extremists, which was why U.S. interests in what happened there were meager.  And why, even with all the chaos ongoing there, Tunisa is viewed as gaining some moderate stability soon.  But Egypt is a different story: they have groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (who openly renounce violence but clearly oppose womens' rights and want to place Egypt under Sharia law), and worse groups like Islamic Jihad with ties to Al-Qaeda.  If the protests do succeed in ousting Mubarak, the fear is (SEE AGAIN Iran 1979 to now) that the extremists will be the only organized group to take over Egypt and start their reign of terror.

An Islam extremist Egypt will certainly break all treaties with Israel, their agreements having been the keystone to Middle East peace efforts over the last 30 years.  They'd also expel most of the tourists, arrest every Coptic, and place their women in Third-Class status (think Taliban but in hotter climes).  What's worse - Iran fell to extremists in 1979 but they were Shiite by faith, and they are a minority of Muslim followers and thus had little influence across the Islam world: Egypt is mostly Sunni, and if they fall to extremists the Sunni extremists in other nations will have a rallying cry and a base of support. 

All of the rising protests in the Middle East should bring concerns to the rest of the world.  If even one of these nations - Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia - falls to an extremist government, no matter if the others become solid democracies they will still have a poisonous asp sitting in their midst looking to spread their violent jihad everywhere they think their faith should be (which starts with their Sunni neighbors, then every nation ever touched by Muslim rule, then the rest of the world).

There's little the United States can do with regards to these uprisings: like the recent Iranian protests, a heavy U.S. presence will do the exact opposite of what our nation would like.  We'd like a pro-Western Iran to have risen from the anger of the Green Revolution of 2009... but any U.S. public support would have been used by the corrupt regime to justify their crackdown of "foreign-influenced rioters".  We'd like a pro-Western Egypt (and Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and Algeria) to remain ticking along like a reliable clock, but we can neither public upbraid Mubarak to have him open up his government (which would humiliate and weaken him), nor back any violent crackdowns that would keep the extremists from power (but would also harm a ton of honest Egyptians in the process).

The best we can do is hope that saner heads remain in control of the uprisings.  That the extremists are viewed as obstacles and not allies by the protesters.  That we do get to see genuine democratic nations in the Middle East when this is all over.  And that as few people as possible are harmed in the chaos befalling their nations.  There's been too many deaths already...


Best we can do is pray.

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Here Comes The State of the Union

"...He shall, from time to time..."

The biggest question about Obama's upcoming SOTU speech among the Talking Heads on television will be if he speaks out against Keith Olbermann's ouster from MSNBC.  Kidding.  But I wouldn't be surprised if those self-absorbed nabobs went there.

No, the biggest question is if Obama will surrender his forces to the GOP House / Teabagger leadership under threat of government shutdowns and whatnot.

The buzz is that Obama will address the deficit as the primary issue, but how he will address it is the key.  Will Obama push for drastic cuts on everything the Republicans hate - Social Security, social safety net spending, education, state funding, etc. - or will he aim for more moderate cuts with a stronger emphasis on spending caps?

For myself, I hope that Obama comes out swinging on the issue that's REALLY the major issue for most Americans: the ongoing unemployment crisis.  For every Congressperson obsessed with the deficit (THAT THEY CAUSED) there's about ten Americans obsessed with how bad the job market is and how bad the wage earnings are.  Obama's probably unable to push for any government project (the Republicans still hate Obama's stimulus package with a vengeance, and most Americans still aren't aware how effective that stimulus was in keeping us out of a full-blown DEPRESSION), but he's got to do something to address the fact that there's at least 15-20 million Americans who have been unemployed longer than 27 weeks... and that those long-term unemployed are frozen out of the sluggish recovery we've recently been watching on the financial news.

Obama better have something good on the table for the jobs issue.  If he doesn't, we're screwed.  It's jobs, people, it's JOBS that help keep this economy going...

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