I’ve long argued that rape and sexual abuse in our prisons is the most important issue in American politics (or possibly the second most important, behind eliminating the democratic deficit).

So I should point out that there are a few hours left to submit public comments to the Department of Justice on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission’s proposed standards to eliminate prison rape. You can go here and click on “submit comment” (or go to regulations.gov and search for “Docket No. OAG-131″). You can also learn more here and here.

I was almost going to write a much longer post about why rape and sexual abuse in American prisons is such an important issue — and so indicative of the barbaric sadism at the center of the American psyche, seeing as how we are the Land of the Incarcerated — but then I realized that would be kind of like writing an essay arguing against Nazi human experimentation. I shouldn’t have to convince anyone that it’s brutal and sickening, because those words have no meaning if they don’t apply to forcing someone to live in an environment where they’re violently raped and sexually humiliated on a regular basis.

So I haven’t been writing anything lately about all the newest crimes of the political class and the moneyed interests, let alone posting any of my poems (I remain quite prolific), as I’ve been trying to finish some projects which I’ll probably reveal here when they are done.

But this video was too disturbing to ignore.

Now, I make no claims to being well-versed in the finer points of Jonas-Brothers-based humor (beyond jocularly mispronouncing their names with a “Y” sound, as is my comedic heritage), but I think I get this one: it’s funny because the President claims the right to order American citizens killed with no judicial process!

So I decided to come up with some other punchlines that Barack Obama might like to try out:

“Boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: Abu Ghraib. You will never see it coming.”
“Boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: penile torture. You will never see it coming.”
“Boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: Camp No. You will never see it coming.”
“Boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: forced sodomy. You will never see it coming.”

Tee hee! I look forward to a great career in White House speechwriting.

In 2008, I expected a lot of nasty shit to go down after Obama took office. I can’t say, however, that I could have anticipated that it would be the so-called liberals in Congress who would deal the final death blow to the dream of socialized medicine and real healthcare reform.

To anyone who supports the bill that just passed, ask yourself why you think any of the consumer protections in it carry any weight whatsoever, when the passage of an individual mandate with no public option means that the insurance companies are now rich enough to gut every reform that cuts into their profits.

There’s a reason (besides poor mental health) that people fall for the lies and demagoguery coming from drug-addled racists, Mansonesque Mormon alcoholics, borderline illiterate Christian jihadist ding-dongs, and the astroturfed “Tea Party” movement, and that reason is the moral bankruptcy of the “liberal” political class in this country. Obama was never for the public option: he secretly promised the for-profit hospital industry that there would be none, and went on to tell the American people he supported one. He made another backroom deal with the pharmaceutical industry to oppose allowing government to negotiate drug prices, and later lied about it.

And what do liberals do? Dennis Kucinich, the most visible exponent of leftist policies in Congress, did what he always does: he made a big show of supporting real alternatives to the corporate model, and then fell in line when it turned out that his vote might actually matter. He did the same thing during the 2008 election when he claimed to oppose any candidate who would “employ war as an instrument of foreign policy,” and then gave a speech at the Democratic Convention endorsing Obama. (Salient quote at 2:40: “The insurance companies took over healthcare! Wake up, America! The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing! Wake up, America!”) Kucinich, that paragon of progressivism, has no real principles. Then again, to be fair, I suppose boning leggy redheads who are half your age and twice your height is a pretty solid principle. (more…)

In America, this posting and this blog are the disjointed screeds of violent right-wing extremists.

For contrast, here is an example of a serious and cogent contribution to our political discourse:

WALLACE: How hard do you think President Obama would be to defeat in 2012?

PALIN: It depends on a few things, say he played — I got this from Buchanan — say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decide to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel–which I would like him to do. That changes the dynamics of what we can assume will happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, Obama would not be elected.

WALLACE: You’re not suggesting that Obama would cynically play the war card?

PALIN: I’m not suggesting that, I’m saying if he did, things would dramatically change if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and secure our allies. I think people would shift their thinking a bit.

Here is a quote from Bedell’s “bizarre series of Internet postings”:

The moral values of individuals and communities are increasingly attacked by a political system where deceit is routine and accepted, and the only standard is power. This inexorable attack on morality and conscience must be opposed and overcome.

(more…)

OK, so it’s bad enough that Google knows all my private conversations and preferences in pornography (have I told you about my Lutheran deaconess fetish?*).

And then there’s this creepy NSA collaboration business. Since when is a surveillance agency in the business of cybersecurity anyway? (Although it’s not really a huge surprise.) And how about Youtube’s censorship of questions to President Obama about marijuana legalization?

But now Google had to drop a big steaming turd on my e-mail account. I’m getting tired of your waterhead fuckarounds, Google. All I wanted was e-mail. If I wanted a goddamn social networking site, I would already be on Twatbook or Facefuck or whatever the kids are using these days. And I certainly wouldn’t be on a social network that automatically lists me as “following” my proctologist.

Salient quote:

When I enabled Google Buzz, it was using a photo on my personal Buzz page (not my profile or anything) that I’d taken on my Droid but hadn’t ever uploaded. Why? And why that photo? And–what? That’s just creepy as hell.

And a quote from a Google statement:

We thought very carefully about how to create a great experience in Google Buzz with as minimal setup as possible. We designed our auto-following system to enable users to immediately see content from the people they email and chat with most, so when they start using Buzz, it “just works.” If users are automatically followed to anyone they’d rather not follow, it’s easy to remove these individuals during the auto-following step by clicking on the “edit” link and then clicking “unfollow” next to their names.

(more…)

So Poetariat has been silent for a while, but I guess Smokehouse is probably working, and I’ve been putting some effort into my own personal projects. When finished, said projects may or may not be the subject of a future post.

I also have a variety of subjects I’ve been meaning to write about, but every time I think about writing about poodles or television or Icelandic people, it seems to me to be rather like a conversation about trees.

I don’t really have anything to say about Obama’s snoozer of a State of the Union speech the other night, or about the nasty little fascist dorkwad who gave the Republican response. I realize that “fascist” is a bit hackneyed nowadays, but anyone who thinks that Obama’s record has been marked by excessive respect for civil liberties is truly diseased. (Why, yes, I have adopted Frank Zappa’s typographic idiosyncrasies; glad you asked.) Overall, the most interesting quote from that night was when Chris Matthews said, “I forgot he was black for an hour!” Stay classy, Chris.

Anyway, if the American news media had any priorities, there would be two headlines on the front page of the newspaper every day: a really really big one saying FORCES OF EVIL CONTINUE TO CONTROL PLANET, and then underneath that a smaller one saying “Puppies, kittens still adorable.” But to provide some further detail, here are some interesting links I’ve seen since the last time I posted. Some are old, but they are still relevant because a) timely blogging is THE MAN, b) I assume that everyone who reads Poetariat lives in the wilderness on honey and locusts and has no exposure to other media, c) many of the most important news stories only appear once and then nobody ever talks about them again, and d) to paraphrase Ralph Nader, “to know and not to blog is not to know.” Ralph Nader would probably slap me for saying that.

Gitmo North
detainees are nonpersons
11% think free market is working well
Afghanistan wants foreign killers handed over (more…)

Here are some interesting news stories I read this morning:

RI Gov. Don Carcieri, already known for his authoritarian bent, legalizes police rape (did you know that in areas where prostitution is illegal, a prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get arrested by one?)
provisions of leaked ACTA treaty would ruin the internet
patents on human genes challenged
teenagers sue school that violated their free speech rights to enforce Abrahamic “morality”
and speaking of Abrahamic morality…
court says swearing in text messages is legal, as should be obvious to any American with a rudimentary grasp of civics
Sen. Grassley wants to prohibit government advisers from discussing an end to the drug war, as is already the case with the “drug czar”
Maine voters reject love
bats like oral sex

Also, Sibel Edmonds has a new news and commentary site that you should check out, and here is an in-depth interview with her and fellow FBI whistleblower John M. Cole. And here are some very inspiring rugs by Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo.

Do you live in Rhode Island?

Do you think that the state needs to stop interfering with people’s private lives?

Do you think that when a proposed law is advocated by the police, the Attorney General, and the Catholic Church, but opposed by every significant civil liberties and human rights group, that’s usually a sign that it’s a bad idea?

Do you think that Roger Williams had the right idea when he came up with the whole “separation of church and state” thing?

Do you think there’s already enough Mafia activity around here?

Do you dislike it when hookers get beaten by pimps, raped by cops, and murdered by the Craigslist Killer?

Do you think the state is already spending too much on incarcerating people when we’re broke and everyone is unemployed?

Then you should call your state legislators and tell them that they need to keep prostitution legal. You can find some compelling reasons to do so here.

If this country’s news media were rational and not preoccupied with trifles, the ALL-CAPS front-page headlines every day would be the following:

• TOP 1% OWN MORE THAN 90% OF WEALTH
• MOST INCARCERATED SOCIETY IN THE WORLD: PRISON RAPE RAMPANT
• WAR OF AGGRESSION STILL GOING UNPUNISHED: WAR CRIMES INCLUDE CHILD RAPE, GENITAL TORTURE

…and probably also NSA MONITORING ALL INTERNET TRAFFIC. Anyway, here’s some other news I’ve been meaning to write some blog posts about for the past few months, but I’m a procrastinator, so now most of it isn’t news anymore, but I’m still linking to the articles since you may have missed some of them:

drug decriminalization in Latin America
FBI can “assess” any individual without suspicion
British high court rules that seven paragraphs describing the torture of Binyam Mohamed should be released, Obama administration predictably objects
two-year-old denied health insurance for being too small, rape is also a preexisting condition; meanwhile, Obama not demanding public option, even though 57% of Americans favor it (but honestly, I can barely keep up with all the hourly changes in the status of the public option)
ASCAP thinks you owe them money for “public performance” of your ringtone
Remind me never to move to Virginia
REAL ID is back
Irish Peace Prize winner calls Obama award “sad”
Obama administration considers phone companies “an arm of the government,” Congress an appendage to executive branch
the alternative economy (more…)

Giving Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize is like giving Sarah Palin an award for her compassion toward rape victims.*

Seriously, it’s Norway‘s biggest dick move since they forced Iceland to convert to Christianity. I think this would be a good time to recall the immortal words of ODIN:

Give praise to the day at evening, | to a woman on her pyre,
To a weapon which is tried, | to a maid at wed lock,
To ice when it is crossed, | to ale that is drunk.

–the Hávamál

HEED THE WISDOM OF THE ALLFATHER, NORWAY.

*Although perhaps it’s appropriate that he be given a peace prize named after a munitions manufacturer. So maybe I should say it’s like giving Sarah Palin the Roman Polanski Compassion Toward Rape Victims Prize… which, in all honesty, would be totally great.