Make that Barrett's alleged assailant
I couldn't help but notice a regrettable bit of journalistic carelessness in your Aug. 21 issue. It appeared in "The Week in Review" column dealing with the Aug. 15 attack on Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Describing the assault at the Wisconsin State Fair, the writer referred to Barrett's "20-year-old assailant." Based on a cross-reference of other media sources, it was easy for me to figure out you were referring to the suspect, Anthony J. Peters. Peters has not been convicted of this offense, at least not yet.
I'm not an unabashed fan of the United States' "criminal justice system." However, one thing that is positive about our common law tradition, in contrast to a number of other legal codes in use worldwide, is its presumption of innocence. Wouldn't it have been more prudent to describe Mr. Peters as Barrett's "alleged assailant"?
Even in the most heinous crimes, the suspect should be extended all the protections of due process.
Dan A. Goldstein
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Vs. Repubs & Blue Dogs, Autumn 2008. Still valid!
It took me a while to locate this pre-eminent, prurient profane protestation from the last presidential election cycle:
This is for all the heedless, brainless maniacs who fell for the repubnican-democrap line about WMD's in Iraq. You pugnacious, pernicious, pugilistic pukes have displayed a surprising bit of touching concern for the recent recipients of American largess, generously distributed as it has been of late by the War Secretary's F-16's and B-52's. I just heared those nattering nabobs on the News Hour deliver a short blip about Robert Gates crying crocodile tears over ninety "accidental" victims of US bombing in Afghanistan. Also reported in the Buffalo News and elsewhere: http://www.buffalonews.com/260/story/441630.html Such protestations of remorse bring to mind the wise old saying: "The butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart." You know, it hardly suffices that charnel-house operators like Gates have been the absolute ruin of Afghanistan and Iraq, those two unfortunate countries that were already so widely ruined before the latest US interventions. It seems increasingly certain these days that the mindless, gung-ho automatons have graduated to bigger and better things. They've done far more than their share of destroying the good old USA, that insecure homeland of ours they claim to love so interminably.
Got a little problem of collapsing infrastructure, the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis fell down? Solution: Flush another $130 for perpetual slaughter in Iraq down the national sewer pipe! Galveston wiped off the map, Houston torn to shreds and SE Texas without power for as long as a month? Solution: Waste yet more billions on idiotic interventions in Afghanistan, maybe even Pakistan. BTW, it just won't do to ignore Pakistan's nuclear arsenal while engaging in those daring, demented, demonic cross-border raids. Not too smart, going along for the ride on this score, Obama! Lehman Bros. and AIG gone under, and the Dow drops about 900 points in a couple days? Solution: Well, how about more tax breaks for the richest 2% of Americans! McCain, you really ARE insane. And your PTSD clearly disqualifies you for executive office. Sweet Jesus, why don't you shoot the entire wad, you FOOLS! The fiscally treasonous bastards in the White House and Congress bestow a calmitous and ubiquitous war of terror upon us all that will likely cost at least $3 trillion before it's done, if indeed it ever DOES end. And while I'm extremely "grateful" to the Chinese banks for their indulgence thus far in financing this genocidal spectacle, the bill is finally coming due. The fit has most definitely hit the shan. I don't think for one damn minute the present economic mayhem on Wall Street and Main Street is unrelated to America's latest seven-year shopping spree of death.
So Fuck you very much, you meatheaded, moronic, militaristic morons of mass mendacity. You beligerent bone-breaking bozos and your chicken-hawk overlords have finally succeeded in the grotesque goal of destroying these, "my" United States! Yes, I do have a penchant for understatement, but a reserved tone must be employed in order that the rectally-oriented retrogrades mired so relentlessly in Republican recession might take a break from wanking their withering wangs' wargasms long enough to comprehend the almost limitless damage they have wrought. Those superficially sadistic schmuckos need me, by way of enlightening their sick and sorry asses on a broad range of topics, to intelligently illuminate the IMPACT of their inhuman wars of inanity even on ignoramouses like themselves. They will not escape the hell that is to be paid, either. And just as they have been throughout the course of human events, their vile wars have served as the enabler par excellance of Tyranny.
I'm simply not able to stomach the cavalcade of cretinous crap from the credulous creeping-crud creators of destructive inequality anymore. Not without at least offering mild objections like those above, and those below: GUANTANAMO must be CLOSED, YESTERDAY!!! The Military Commissions Act must be repealed, the day before!!! As a proud member of the ACLU, I am forced to wonder what these fanatically flag-flying Fuckheads have against James Madison, our fine city's namesake and the "Father of the Constitution???" How did Thomas Jefferson, who penned those magnificent words extolling the virtues of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" ever end up on their shit-list??? Why do these altogether aberrated authoritarian assholes, on the Supreme Court and elsewhere, so despise those two affluent, aristocratic, slave-owning dead Virginians? Fervently fecund, ferociously fornicating founding fathers like them did at least enumerate SOME human rights for SOME people; I suppose THAT is the very reason Madison and Jefferson must now be disowned by the dismally dictatorial dickheads of doom. To them I SCREAM: Let's Restore Our Lost Liberties!!! What this country really needs are PRAGMATISTS, instead of "patriots," the latter creature so eminently worthy of Ben Franklin's loquacious loathing. For freedom's sake we must overturn the putrid "PATRIOT Act." It must be obvious after all these unctious, undulating utterances and asinine alliteration that it has been most disagreeable and stressful for me to attempt to educate them on these complicated matters in so charitable a fashion. I leave it to somebody else now, someone else less intrinsically inclined to mince words.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." - Howard Zinn
This is for all the heedless, brainless maniacs who fell for the repubnican-democrap line about WMD's in Iraq. You pugnacious, pernicious, pugilistic pukes have displayed a surprising bit of touching concern for the recent recipients of American largess, generously distributed as it has been of late by the War Secretary's F-16's and B-52's. I just heared those nattering nabobs on the News Hour deliver a short blip about Robert Gates crying crocodile tears over ninety "accidental" victims of US bombing in Afghanistan. Also reported in the Buffalo News and elsewhere: http://www.buffalonews.com/260/story/441630.html Such protestations of remorse bring to mind the wise old saying: "The butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart." You know, it hardly suffices that charnel-house operators like Gates have been the absolute ruin of Afghanistan and Iraq, those two unfortunate countries that were already so widely ruined before the latest US interventions. It seems increasingly certain these days that the mindless, gung-ho automatons have graduated to bigger and better things. They've done far more than their share of destroying the good old USA, that insecure homeland of ours they claim to love so interminably.
Got a little problem of collapsing infrastructure, the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis fell down? Solution: Flush another $130 for perpetual slaughter in Iraq down the national sewer pipe! Galveston wiped off the map, Houston torn to shreds and SE Texas without power for as long as a month? Solution: Waste yet more billions on idiotic interventions in Afghanistan, maybe even Pakistan. BTW, it just won't do to ignore Pakistan's nuclear arsenal while engaging in those daring, demented, demonic cross-border raids. Not too smart, going along for the ride on this score, Obama! Lehman Bros. and AIG gone under, and the Dow drops about 900 points in a couple days? Solution: Well, how about more tax breaks for the richest 2% of Americans! McCain, you really ARE insane. And your PTSD clearly disqualifies you for executive office. Sweet Jesus, why don't you shoot the entire wad, you FOOLS! The fiscally treasonous bastards in the White House and Congress bestow a calmitous and ubiquitous war of terror upon us all that will likely cost at least $3 trillion before it's done, if indeed it ever DOES end. And while I'm extremely "grateful" to the Chinese banks for their indulgence thus far in financing this genocidal spectacle, the bill is finally coming due. The fit has most definitely hit the shan. I don't think for one damn minute the present economic mayhem on Wall Street and Main Street is unrelated to America's latest seven-year shopping spree of death.
So Fuck you very much, you meatheaded, moronic, militaristic morons of mass mendacity. You beligerent bone-breaking bozos and your chicken-hawk overlords have finally succeeded in the grotesque goal of destroying these, "my" United States! Yes, I do have a penchant for understatement, but a reserved tone must be employed in order that the rectally-oriented retrogrades mired so relentlessly in Republican recession might take a break from wanking their withering wangs' wargasms long enough to comprehend the almost limitless damage they have wrought. Those superficially sadistic schmuckos need me, by way of enlightening their sick and sorry asses on a broad range of topics, to intelligently illuminate the IMPACT of their inhuman wars of inanity even on ignoramouses like themselves. They will not escape the hell that is to be paid, either. And just as they have been throughout the course of human events, their vile wars have served as the enabler par excellance of Tyranny.
I'm simply not able to stomach the cavalcade of cretinous crap from the credulous creeping-crud creators of destructive inequality anymore. Not without at least offering mild objections like those above, and those below: GUANTANAMO must be CLOSED, YESTERDAY!!! The Military Commissions Act must be repealed, the day before!!! As a proud member of the ACLU, I am forced to wonder what these fanatically flag-flying Fuckheads have against James Madison, our fine city's namesake and the "Father of the Constitution???" How did Thomas Jefferson, who penned those magnificent words extolling the virtues of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" ever end up on their shit-list??? Why do these altogether aberrated authoritarian assholes, on the Supreme Court and elsewhere, so despise those two affluent, aristocratic, slave-owning dead Virginians? Fervently fecund, ferociously fornicating founding fathers like them did at least enumerate SOME human rights for SOME people; I suppose THAT is the very reason Madison and Jefferson must now be disowned by the dismally dictatorial dickheads of doom. To them I SCREAM: Let's Restore Our Lost Liberties!!! What this country really needs are PRAGMATISTS, instead of "patriots," the latter creature so eminently worthy of Ben Franklin's loquacious loathing. For freedom's sake we must overturn the putrid "PATRIOT Act." It must be obvious after all these unctious, undulating utterances and asinine alliteration that it has been most disagreeable and stressful for me to attempt to educate them on these complicated matters in so charitable a fashion. I leave it to somebody else now, someone else less intrinsically inclined to mince words.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." - Howard Zinn
Sunday, August 16, 2009
For Three Mile Island Meltdown's 30th anniversary.
"Gee, ma, why are so many folks so scared of nuclear power?"
Well, for example back during the March/April 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, we "bit the nuclear bullet," chomped down hard! I remember those dark days quite well, and it's very fortunate for the eastern United States and Canada that the (well-documented) explosion of a hydrogen build-up which took place in Three Mile Island's #2's containment during the first few days of the meltdown didn't rupture that dome! This was a MAJOR worry for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officials on-and off-site at the time. If the containment HAD been breached, (a not at all improbable outcome) the resulting release of about a billion curies of radioactive gases and particles (roughly equivalent to the fission by-products spread by a one-megaton nuclear blast) would certainly have been more than merely devastating!
More recently, the ongoning miserable safety record of the US nuclear industry has spoken loudly enough for intelligent people to comprehend the awful truth. For example, on February 15, 2000, radioactive steam was released into the atmosphere at the Indian Point reactor #2, located in New York state's Lower Hudson Valley region. The leak was caused by a breach in an aging steam generator. At first, the NRC claimed there was no release of radioactivity; the NRC later admitted that there was a leak, but said, as it almost always does, that the discharge posed no threat to public safety. Then there is the Vermont Yankee plant. As reported in a July 26, 2008 Rutland Herald article, headlined: "Study: Yankee Radiation up 30 percent," the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant is indeed releasing 30 percent more radiation into the environment since it increased energy output by 20% in 2006. Vermont Yankee also experienced an "embarassing" partial collapse of one of its cooling towers in 2007, even though that same tower had been inspected earlier in the year. And there have been several "near-misses" in the last thirty years, for example at Davis-Besse near Toledo, Ohio:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0307/S00060.htm
Not to mention the recent leakages of radioactive tritium at the Braidwood Generating Station in Braceville, Illinois and also at the aforementioned Indian Point Reactor # 2 located in Westchester Co., New York:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/national/17nuke.html
I hope these recent examples of environmental harm caused by nuclear fission powered recklessness will suffice as proof we should retain Wisconsin's construction moratorium! BTW, I deliberately focus on Three Mile Island because it was a PARTIAL CORE MELTDOWN right there in "river city," USA. A partial meltdown that led to the release of substantial radioactivity into the Harrisburg area's atmosphere and into the Susquehanna River. A near catastrophe that almost eradicated many thousands of lives in 1979, and may be responsible for causing thousands of cancers, up to this very day.
Nuclear fission reactors are a potential environmental calamity that could happen at any time. Consider the fact that many US reactors are nearing the end of their intended lifespans, and many appear to be lacking the necessary modifications and continual (and very expensive) maintenance required to make them even remotely safe. Nuke plants are enormously expensive to build and maintain and extremely dangerous to operate. Not to mention the almost insurmountable difficulties posed by the disposal of their radioactive waste. Such waste remains lethal for tens of thousands of years. It's in Wisconsinites' best interest to pressure Jim Doyle and the Legislature not to overturn our state's sensible 25-year moratorium on building new commercial atomic reactors. Anyway, how absurd and suicidal it is to think we need MORE nukes when solar, wind, geo-thermal and biomass are the safer, saner way to meet our reliable, renewable energy needs! America (and the world) need to stop playing around with the "nuclear-roulette revolver" before we experience yet another Three Mile Island disaster or Chernobyl catastrophe.
Check out: http://solartopia.org
Well, for example back during the March/April 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, we "bit the nuclear bullet," chomped down hard! I remember those dark days quite well, and it's very fortunate for the eastern United States and Canada that the (well-documented) explosion of a hydrogen build-up which took place in Three Mile Island's #2's containment during the first few days of the meltdown didn't rupture that dome! This was a MAJOR worry for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officials on-and off-site at the time. If the containment HAD been breached, (a not at all improbable outcome) the resulting release of about a billion curies of radioactive gases and particles (roughly equivalent to the fission by-products spread by a one-megaton nuclear blast) would certainly have been more than merely devastating!
More recently, the ongoning miserable safety record of the US nuclear industry has spoken loudly enough for intelligent people to comprehend the awful truth. For example, on February 15, 2000, radioactive steam was released into the atmosphere at the Indian Point reactor #2, located in New York state's Lower Hudson Valley region. The leak was caused by a breach in an aging steam generator. At first, the NRC claimed there was no release of radioactivity; the NRC later admitted that there was a leak, but said, as it almost always does, that the discharge posed no threat to public safety. Then there is the Vermont Yankee plant. As reported in a July 26, 2008 Rutland Herald article, headlined: "Study: Yankee Radiation up 30 percent," the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant is indeed releasing 30 percent more radiation into the environment since it increased energy output by 20% in 2006. Vermont Yankee also experienced an "embarassing" partial collapse of one of its cooling towers in 2007, even though that same tower had been inspected earlier in the year. And there have been several "near-misses" in the last thirty years, for example at Davis-Besse near Toledo, Ohio:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0307/S00060.htm
Not to mention the recent leakages of radioactive tritium at the Braidwood Generating Station in Braceville, Illinois and also at the aforementioned Indian Point Reactor # 2 located in Westchester Co., New York:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/national/17nuke.html
I hope these recent examples of environmental harm caused by nuclear fission powered recklessness will suffice as proof we should retain Wisconsin's construction moratorium! BTW, I deliberately focus on Three Mile Island because it was a PARTIAL CORE MELTDOWN right there in "river city," USA. A partial meltdown that led to the release of substantial radioactivity into the Harrisburg area's atmosphere and into the Susquehanna River. A near catastrophe that almost eradicated many thousands of lives in 1979, and may be responsible for causing thousands of cancers, up to this very day.
Nuclear fission reactors are a potential environmental calamity that could happen at any time. Consider the fact that many US reactors are nearing the end of their intended lifespans, and many appear to be lacking the necessary modifications and continual (and very expensive) maintenance required to make them even remotely safe. Nuke plants are enormously expensive to build and maintain and extremely dangerous to operate. Not to mention the almost insurmountable difficulties posed by the disposal of their radioactive waste. Such waste remains lethal for tens of thousands of years. It's in Wisconsinites' best interest to pressure Jim Doyle and the Legislature not to overturn our state's sensible 25-year moratorium on building new commercial atomic reactors. Anyway, how absurd and suicidal it is to think we need MORE nukes when solar, wind, geo-thermal and biomass are the safer, saner way to meet our reliable, renewable energy needs! America (and the world) need to stop playing around with the "nuclear-roulette revolver" before we experience yet another Three Mile Island disaster or Chernobyl catastrophe.
Check out: http://solartopia.org
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