PittsburghThoughts

From McClatchy Newspapers by James Rosen:

Posted on Thursday, November 5, 2009

Senate rejects effort to block civilian trials for 9/11 suspects

WASHINGTON — After an emotional debate over how to keep Americans safe, the Senate Thursday narrowly defeated an effort to prevent civilian trials in U.S. courts for the accused planners of the 9/11 attacks.

The Senate's 54-45 vote to reject the measure by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., opens the door for President Barack Obama to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to trial in federal court, rather than the military commissions Graham helped create.

Obama has pledged to shutter the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January and transfer some of its 220 detainees to the U.S. for trials in civilian courts.

Three Democrats — Jim Webb of Virginia and Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor — and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut joined all 40 Senate Republicans in voting for the measure.

Graham, a military lawyer who's served active duty in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, pleaded with his colleagues to back his amendment to a spending measure for the Justice Department and other federal agencies.

"Tell the president that we're not going to sit by as a body and watch the mastermind of 9/11 go into civilian court and criminalize this war," Graham said. "If he goes to federal court, here's what awaits — a chaos zoo trial."

Graham, who helped craft the 2009 Military Commissions Act, said he wants all the Guantanamo detainees to be tried before military tribunals. He crafted his measure narrowly, however, to focus on Mohammed and five other alleged Sept. 11 plotters at the Guantanamo prison.

"Khalid Sheik Mohammed didn't rob a liquor store," Graham said. "He took this nation to war, and he killed 3,000 of our innocent citizens."

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said federal courts have convicted 195 felons of terror-related crimes since the 2001 attacks, while military tribunals have produced only three convictions.

"The Graham amendment would be an unprecedented intrusion into the authority of the executive branch of our government to combat terrorism," Durbin said. "To argue that we cannot successfully prosecute a terrorist in an American court is to ignore the truth and to ignore history."

The Supreme Court struck down the military commission system set up by President George W. Bush, and in a later ruling put restrictions on revamped tribunals that Congress had subsequently created.

Christopher Anders, the senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, hailed the terrorism vote.

"Thankfully, the Senate has made the right decision by not tying the president's hands when it comes to prosecuting detainees," Anders said. "Making it more difficult to prosecute detainees in our federal courts only serves to delay bringing them to justice."

A bevy of powerful senators joined the nearly three-hour debate, among them the chairmen of the Senate Armed Services and Judiciary committees, 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and a former federal judge and former prosecutors.

"We're the most powerful nation on earth, with the most tested court system on earth," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. "Are we going to tell the world . . . we're not up to trying the people who have struck at us?"

 The Good:

General Eric Shinseki Eric Shinseki - SourceWatch

General Wesly Clark Anti-terrorist expert exposes Bush's weakness on security  

 

General McCaffrey One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex - Series - NYTimes.com

General Stanley McChrystal Jon Krakauer: McChrystal's Explanation For Pat Tillman Cover-up Is "Preposterous" 

This one is good if you can hold the 3-D effect. It comes out of the screen at least two levels. Slightly cross your eyes until you get the 3-D effect and then you can relax them and enjoy.

Since we're the same age and have the same political philosophy, Billy Boy Arnold - It Should Have Been Me.mp3

Thanks, again, to Bernie K,                                   

After a two year loan to the United States, Michelangelo's David is being returned to Italy .

 Olivia Newton-John - I Honestly Love You.mp3

Six Year old boy rides strange Moscow cloud to father's laboratory in the Bavarian Alps.

Little Eddie Munster climbed aboard his father's cloud sent to bring him back to his laboratory in the Bavarian Alps for a second operation. Eddie was born part vampire and part undead Frankenstein Monster. His father who is all Monster has been trying to infuse Eddie with human stem cells in an effort to check and in some cases reverse his natural tendensies and developemnet towards Monsterism.  Little Eddie was surprised by all the fuss and said to our, on the scene reporter, Gene Z., "Man, all this excitment makes me want to bite a neck." Little Eddie was taken into protective custody after he fell through the strange cloud over Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski's forest reserve in Krzemionki.

LIttle Eddie Munster

Professor Munster.

Rachel slaps em down but like an evil "Rocky" they stagger to their feet expecting the other side to throw the fight,

Not a big surprise or even a small one but I've given up on the human race. Oh, individuals are fine for a while until they get under your skin but groups are so bound by "group think" that they negate their own purposes and then have to make personal concessions so that they can live within their group hypocrisy.

A big, for instance, jumps right out at me; all those supposed grass roots organizations that the conservatives or whatever they are like to tout as sprouting from the ground up.

The theory being; people are so tired of the status quo, or so afraid to change the status quo, they will unite around either some charismatic leader or political idea being purposed by less than charismatic followers. Surely, get enough people in a room, vocal and irrepressible, and the ones that haven't made up their minds, or are even opposed to the propositions being put forth, will feel a certain pressure to join the throng. The rest like drawing little Hitler moustaches.

We have millions of empty drums pounding themselves in an effort to express their frustration at the expense of the other 98% of their brain. Here's a perfect example that I watched unfold last night. This man, Tim Philips, is not one iota short of having the chutzpa of a holocaust denier.

Summation: We are grass roots even though we start from the top down and use the American people to fight for rich people's interests at the expense of their own, and "Yes, we can fool all the people all the time."

The following is Doman Auto Sales' response to the complaint I filed against them with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office and Bureau of Consumer Protection. I had to retype their response and my reply because I couldn't get the consistency that I desired through the scanning software.The whole story was relayed in a previous blog that somehow got lost in the chronosynclastic infundibulum of the Internet.

DOMAN AUTO & MARINE SALES, INC.

Dear A. David Etzi,

We have read the above complaint and would like to thank you for the opportunity to preserve goodwill for our business.

We sold Mr. Zizis the vehicle as shown on our sales contract over several days. Mr. Zizis inspected and test drove the vehicle. We believe he took the car to a mechanic to have it looked over before purchase. He noted several things wrong with the vehicle, cosmetic ( dents and interior condition ) and mechanical ( engine oil seepage ) including the air conditioner and made an offer. His offer on the vehicle, which was listed for $2750.00, was $2000.000 plus costs and we were to repair the air conditioning only ( at our expense ). In our opinion, Mr. Zizis knew exactly what he was purchasing. We maintained full disclosure of the vehicle and terms of the sale. You will note that on the contract there are items circled and underlined for emphasis. In addition, the vehicle had current state safety inspection and did not exhibit any of the conditions Mr. Zizis quotes at the time of the sale. We agreed to his offer and repaired the air conditioning. The following day Mr. Zizis returned, test drove and inspected the vehicle again. Finding it satisfactory, he purchased as shown on the sales contract. Mr. Zizis did purchase a service contract and elected not to have the components he refers to be covered components. He declined the additional coverage even though it was available to him.

We find it noteworthy that no documentation for the repairs has been included with the complaint and incomprehensible the Mr. Zizis could pay $2,367.70 for a car and request we pay $2,435.32 for his maintenance. We have no way of rebutting the second hand information he quotes. However, we believe any maintenance costs the vehicle needs have been grossly exaggerated. In addition, we have no means of monitoring the use of the vehicle once it leaves our facility. We understand that maintenance repairs for consumers can be untimely. However, they can be caused or magnified by consumer use, misuse or neglect. Please note on his statement regarding a hydraulic leak, "after a day there were hydraulic leaks in the driveway. I called the dealer the following week. There are a number of questions we will never have an answer to. But, it is entirely the customer's responsibility to maintain the proper operation of the vehicle so that consequential damage does not result. This is especially true at Mr. Zizis' price point. If we were to believe Mr. Zizis that several major components in the braking system were faulty at the point of sale, we believe they would have manifested themselves over the course of the several days while he was test driving and purchasing. Again. we have no way of controlling what happens to a vehicle after it leaves our facility.

As a dealer we feel we have completed our portion of the transaction in good faith. Mr. Zizis, an experienced  car buyer, inspected, negotiated price, requested specific repairs and was fully aware the condition of the vehicle before purchasing. We stand by the terms of the sale and in Mr. Zizis' own words "I was satisfied". We also take exception to the use of innuendo in this forum.

If you have any questions or need additional information, I can be reached at the address, telephone number or email address above.

Sincerely,

Chris Pantelis, Doman Auto Sals, Inc.

 

My rebuttal, also sent to the Attorney General:

Re: Doman Auto& Marine Sales, Inc.

Dear Mr. A David Etzi,

In Doman's response to my complaint against them, the third sentence is a complete fabrication; "[We] believe he [Gene Zizis] took the car to a mechanic to have it looked at before purchase." They know full well this isn't true.

All that I noted that was wrong with the vehicle was the air conditioner wasn't working. I did not make a counter offer. Their salesman, Bob Smith, offered to fix the air conditioner and lower the price.

They say, "In their opinion Mr. Zizis knew exactly what he was purchasing." Yes this is true; I was purchasing a car, which I thought had an operational braking system. They site the underlined portions of the sale contract and the fact that it had a current state inspection sticker as if to indicate that they are relieved of ANY responsibility for selling a car with a leaking corroded brake line system.

I'm to believe, according to them, and so are you and the Bureau of Consumer Protection that a problem of such magnitude developed, in the two days that I took charge of the car, that the brake lines spontaniously corroded and ALL the brake fluid leaked our causing the brake pedal to go to the floor while being driven. I consider the absence of any kind of tangible proof that they didn't know what they were selling as sheer fabrication and an insult to my intelligence.

They mentioned that I purchased a service contract and that I chose one that didn't cover the specific components that were bad. This is completely irrelevant. Addressing the test drive, there was only one, not two as they state in their response, the one I took originally when I first saw he car on their lot. A test drive will not indicate that there's a hydraulic leak until the amount of fluid is at a critical level. They could have simply filled the master cylinder every morning to avoid any test drive braking problems.

Doman's finds it noteworthy that no documentation for the repairs has been included with the complaint. As I stated to you, I originally sent all of my records to the Harrisburg Office and I called you as soon ( today ) as I received Doman's response to ask whether or not they had forwarded the records to you. I also called Harrisburg but they were unable to tell me if they had.

Doman also calls my information second hand information while I suppose theirs is solid gold.

In the third paragraph down, towards the bottom of the page, they assert that "Any maintenance costs the vehicle needs have been grossly exaggerated." Maintenance? Replacing corroded brake lines is maintenance?

They save the disclaimer for last: "We have no means of monitoring the use of the vehicle once it leaves our facility." ( In this case, two days after it leaves their facility ). Then to add salt to the wound, "They [the maintenance costs] can be caused or magnified by consumer use, misuse or neglect." They then quote my statement, "After a day there were hydraulic fluid leaks in the driveway, I called the dealer the following week." It was Saturday when I observed the leaks.

They hammer their maintenance point calling it, "The customer's responsibility to maintain the proper operation of their vehicle so that consequential  damage does not result." I know how to maintain a vehicle.

Their final paragraph, they feel that they have completed their portion of the transaction in good faith and take exception of the use of innuendo in this forum. Well, I take exception that someone in my household could have been killed due to their flat out neglect and then when they get caught, hide behind their mumbo jumbo.

Yours truly,   Gene

At the risk of being boring, I have MORE PICTUES of our visit to Natalie's,

Housing in Hoboken, Great place and Franks Sinatra's home town.

Cat painting that struck me in the Antique Emporium of Asbury Park.

See, I told you.

The following pictures are more things from the Antique Emporium, Things I like but wouldn't buy because they're expensive and I have no place to put them.

I love this painting and almost did buy it, almost. Uncle Sam getting down and dirty, rolling up his sleeves to do what must be done. If only ...

This is so out of focus and a rather shitty attempt to repair it with the software from my photography program but I'll bet you still get the idea.

This ship's compass was huge, almost a foot across. The actual magnetic part floats in some fluid for mimimal resistance. I didn't even ask, "How much?"

Beautiful hand painted tray.                                                                                                                                                                     

Loved this unusual clock.                                                                                             

Big Marlins like this used to be everywhere, they are getting rarer and rarer.

The British invasion never sleeps.

It's staying alive. ( These painting were huge maybe 7 or 8 foot tall).

Baby you can drive my car.

 Pretty stuff and a half decent photo.                                                                             

 Love the black babies.

We got back to Elizabeth, N.J., where Natalie lives, just in time to wittness the Hermandad del Senor de los Milagros de Elizabeth procession. The long poles are used to lift up the overhead wires.

After a particularly difficult pass under the wires, the spectators clapped.

A band followed behind and some woman pulling up her pants.                                                                                          

 The carriers, of the huge, heavy Jesus box.

We said our goodbyes the next morning and were on the road back home.   Gene

I love New York.

 Natalie , Our daughter, looking a little defiant, a little vunerable and cute. 

 Some old guy sitting with my wife.

Strike a pose.

Grand Central Station where we discovered the secret of the arches; you stand facing a corner in the domed room and talk while someone stands in the ach on the other side of the diagonal facing the corner, you can talk to each other as plain as day.

 Street scenes. 

 We saw this guy later at the subway station with his guitar and a wha-wha pedal, Not a bad Jimmy Hedrix. He did Little Wing and Vodoo Child.

Art for sale. A little vulgar but IT'S NEW YORK CITY!

One of the hundreds of public libraries.

Fire escapes are everywhere.                                                              

Natalie and her new Beau, he's an illustrator and cartoonist. How cool is that?

These little bronze guys are on the loose in the subway.

To be continued ...

 Fuses blow, car in tow and I don't know, or, A crap a nap, and a slap,

Theoretic magnetic regions are randomly distributed within an iron bar, each having their own north and south poles. Strike the iron bar with a sharp blow from a hammer and the theoretical magnetic regions align. You now have a multitude of norths and corresponding souths magnifying the strength of the magnetic field. The bar has become magnetically polarized. Cut the bar in half and you have two bar magnets, cuts those halves in half and you have four bar magnets, You never lose a pole. When one is present the other is present.

 

You could bend the bar magnet so that the two poles touch and thereby cancel one another out. You could demagnetise the bar with a second sharp blow or you could heat it, Heating the bar magnet permits the magnetic regions to lose their allegiance to one another and go back to random distribution. No one is sure why any of this works the way but it does and current theories explain it rather well. However, a theory is never proof. A theory is an explanation for certain phenomena based on observation, tests, laws and facts. A theory is a weighty thing. It is not a crack pot idea as certain sects would have us believe.

 

Numerous sharp blows have polarized factions across the country: the birthers, the death panelists, the preemptive war crowd, the gun slingers, the laissez-faire capitalists, the demagogues and the woefully ill informed Fox viewers.

 

The blow; was it Watergate? Reagan? A Bush under every rock? Vietnam? Or was it that most damaging sharp blow in recent history, 9-11? Whatever it was, or is, these things are the primary factors in our zeitgeist. 

 

Some, simply need to shake the stupidity that holds them in place and almost everyone thinks that by resisting change, change will never come, They're wrong, the change is here and it reflects our efforts to deny it. Rather that a natural outflow of our justice and good will,  the change is as  twisted as it is convoluted, trying to jam itself into the space allotted for it.

 

Strike the bar and allow the magnetic regions to become random again. They will eventually align themselves, but maybe, this time, rather that point to war and hate, a new way will appear. Or, are we too steeped in fear to even take the chance?

 Steve Martin - King Tut.mp3

 

 

Hello, Make a wish Foundation, how may I assist you?

 

I have a candidate for you, to grant his wish.

 

(Sotto voice, Doesn't everyone?)

 

Hello?

 

Yes I'm sorry you cut out for a second, you were saying something about a child and making an application to grant a wish?

 

He's not a child.

 

This is very irregular, who are we talking about?

 

Me.

 

And how old are you?

 

Fifty eight.

 

I'm sorry sir but the Make a wish Foundation is only for children.

 

I'm a child at heart.

 

Yes I'm sure, You have a nice day.

 

Wait, wait, I'm going to die.

 

Aren't we all?

 

But I mean soon.

 

How soon?

 

Real soon, the doctor said I'll never make it to seventy.

 

And you're fifty eight?

 

Yes.

 

You have twelve years to go, enjoy what you have. Now I really ...

 

It's just a small wish. Probably won't cost as much as

sending a kid and his family to Disney world.

 

Money isn't the issue.

 

Can I talk to the supervisor?

 

One moment.

 

Hello, I have a child here that I believes qualifies for your Make a wish thingie. There must have been a misunderstanding with the first person I spoke to.

 

Ok, let's start this way ... What is the child's wish?

 

Oh, it's going to sound silly after all this hub bub.

 

The wish please?

 

I want ... .errrrr ... My son wants to shoot down a helicopter with an automatic weapon before he dies.

 

Click ...

Two black men and a bug man, 

It seems that everyone has something to say. People with no more oratory skill, or knowledge than Sarah Palin are given a world stage to pontificate on things far beyond their ken. Worst still, credentials have been replaced by notoriety: *Tom Delay, **Ken Blackwell and ***Alan Keyes come to mind but the choices are endless and the nation's premier nut house (Washington) is rife with choices.

Like a cricket's stridulation we are incessantly beaming our noises into the ether, but, while Crickets have their "ears" located on the knees of their front legs, we have our heads up our asses., probably accounting for the shitty discourse that passes for normal today. And let us not forget that the most beautiful array of Peacock feathers emanate from his anus.

All this is to say that our sometimes beautiful, floral speeches are as much meant to attract as our outraged screeds are to repel. Although we wish words alone could do the trick, it isn't that easy, words, in no way, necessarily define our thoughts or positions.

What does define our ethos, logos and pathos then? Just like momma used to say, "Our actions speak louder than our words." It's our actions that matter, call it what you will, but our refusal to be civil and moral, check that, a refusal to do what's required of us to be upright human beings, we fail to florish, and while branding it as good policy, it is as selfish and thoughtless as it is expedient and in most situations, ruthlessly discharged.

Man's default position is to be always be stuck in a decreasingly spacious box. Some start off in large boxes and some in small ones. To push back has limited value. Like Obama and his people we can hope to not lose more ground, or, like Alexander the Great we can cut the Gordian knot that ties us to our potential fate and in one decisive, bold stroke free ourselves from the bonds that hold us powerless . . Gene

*In 2005, a Texas grand jury indicted DeLay on criminal charges that he had conspired to violate campaign finance laws during that period. DeLay denied the charges and pled not guilty, saying they were politically motivated and the law he was indicted under did not apply until later,

**Ohio voters sued Blackwell on August 31, 2006 in a case called King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell in which individual voters and three voters' rights groups alleged that, in his capacity as Secretary of State, Blackwell "allocated [2004] election resources in a racially discriminatory manner and instituted racially discriminatory procedures for provisional voting, purging voters from the statewide voter registration database, and maintaining the chain of custody of ballots. The complaint alleged that these actions led to the dilution and/or cancellation of plaintiffs' vote due to ballot cancellation and tampering, long poll lines, mechanical difficulties with voting machines, and unclear precinct boundaries." The complaint claims that plaintiffs reasonably feared these problems would recur in the November, 2006, election, and asked the court to appoint a special master to perform Blackwell's election administration duties in that election.

This is the same Ken Blackwell that wrote, criticizing ACORN:

As negotiations over Congress’s emergency rescue bill continued over the weekend, repeated rumors leaked out that the Democrats were trying to funnel money to a hyper-partisan organization involved in criminal voter fraud. I’m speaking of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — known by its acronym, ACORN. Although ACORN was cut from the final legislation, it’s important to understand this organization and its long history with, of all people, Barack Obama. And it’s important to see how partisan this emergency legislation has become.

***Goofy black bastard: