Concert Review: Yes at Snoqualmie Casino, Aug. 12, 2012

Roundabout sign near the entrance to Snoqualmie Casino. How fitting for this night!

If I had to choose a Facebook relationship status with Yes, it would most certainly be "It's Complicated." This has been my favorite band for nearly 30 years, and they were my gateway drug into progressive rock. Their songs awakened me to what was musically possible to do in a rock-and-roll context. Chris Squire made me fall in love with the bass guitar, Bill Bruford awed me when I was a young drummer, and Jon Anderson's mongrel spirituality opened my mind to possibilities beyond the religion I was raised in. They were a huge part of my life when I was growing up, and they had a hand in shaping the person I am today.

But then the band moved on without Anderson several years ago. Yes had been inactive for quite a while, in part because Anderson had a different vision for what he wanted to do with the band than the other members. When he fell gravely ill, the band took the opportunity to hire a singer from a Yes tribute act and got Yes back on the road. Crass? You betcha. But Yes has always been notorious for ruthless personnel changes, with the belief that the music came above all else, and if one guy wasn't pulling his weight, they'd just go off and audition someone else.

So Yes went out on the road and eventually cut an album with Benoit David, a French Canadian guy who actually even looked a little like Jon Anderson. But covering Jon Anderson's vocal parts is no easy task, and it was obvious after a while that Benoit had to sing right at the outer edge of his range to mimic Anderson's soaring countertenor parts. At times he was a vocal dead ringer for Jon, but he paid the price for it. As the touring ground on and on, the embarrassing YouTube clips came rolling in with evidence of how Benoit's voice was cracking from the strain.

The band's solution? During a lull between tours, Yes went out and hired another tribute-band singer -- and Benoit says he first heard about the change on the Internet, not from anyone in the band. Classy. Anyway, the new guy is named Jon Davison, and from what I'd seen online, he slipped into the Jon Anderson role with ease.

So when Yes came around again, I decided to go and give them another try. After all, Chris Squire is still one of my favorite living musicians, probably only behind David Gilmour. And I wanted to give this Davison guy a fair shake, especially after what he had to say about one of Yes' most regal pieces of music, "Awaken," on the website for Glass Hammer, another prog band he sings with. So sayeth Mr. Davison:

I recall being a teenager and gazing out my bedroom window at the long stretch of canyon below our house and toward the sunset over the ocean while listening to "Awaken" by Yes. I would daily listen to that majestic and inspired epic several times in a row, longing for a spiritual connection of some kind. When a song like that can move and uplift you to a transcendental state, you know you've witnessed one of life's artistic gems.  

(Source: http://glasshammer.com/pages/features/JonDavison.html)

Jon D. seems like an interesting guy. He was childhood best friends with the Foo Fighters' Taylor Hawkins, and he eventually moved up here to study at the Art Institute of Seattle, before he ended up playing bass with a local band called Sky Cries Mary. (Current drummer Alan White has ties to Seattle, too -- he lives here, somewhere out around Bellevue.) Not long before he got the Yes gig, he tried out as the bass player for the Queen Extravaganza show. He's also singing with Glass Hammer (apropos of nothing, wouldn't a glass hammer be about the most useless tool you could ever own?). And I also happen to be Facebook friends with a guy who was in Roundabout, the Yes tribute band, with him. So hey, cool! I know someone who knows the guy who sings in Yes.

So anyway, the show starts, and Jon Davison seems perfectly relaxed as the singer of Yes. He's not straining to hit the notes, and his love for the music shines through. But the funny thing is, he really doesn't sound like Jon Anderson at all. He can sing in the same range, but his voice has a lighter touch than Anderson's did. Which is not a bad thing, really. Unlike Benoit David before him, he doesn't seem to be trying to mimic Anderson. He's letting himself be his own person onstage, giving the songs what they need from a technical standpoint but also adding his own little vocal flourishes here and there. I like that. Jon Anderson has recovered from his illness, but I've since seen him at a solo show in Seattle, and his voice is raspy enough that I'm not sure it would hold up to the rigors of a full-blown, amplified rock tour -- so if we can't have Anderson back, Jon Davison is the next best thing. No complaints on that front at all.

Chris Squire is still Chris Frickin' Squire, making his bass chug and growl and clang along at full speed, the way he always does. He's as much a rhythm guitarist as he is a bass player, and his sound has always been so integral to the Yes atmosphere, I just can't imagine it without his presence. He's still a superb backing vocalist as well, and he's the consummate showman, hamming it up with glee whenever his bass takes center stage in the music. I've been to probably a dozen Yes concerts over the years, and I never tire of seeing him strut and prowl around the stage when his bass groove kicks in during the long intro to "Heart of the Sunrise." Seeing him at the top of his game even in his mid-60s was worth the price of admission alone.

Alan White is too nice of a guy not to like. He's no Bill Bruford, but then no one is. He remains a solid, reliable timekeeper who knows how to rock out on the drums.

Now you know how I said my relationship with this band is complicated? That's where Geoff Downes and Steve Howe come in. Downes, half of the Buggles ("Video Killed the Radio Star") back in the day, and a founding member of Asia with Steve Howe, came onboard with Yes for the recording of their latest album, Fly From Here, after the band unceremoniously dumped keyboardist Oliver Wakeman, son of Yes legend Rick Wakeman. Downes had performed with Buggle-mate (and now famous producer) Trevor Horn on Yes' 1980 album Drama, so he had some history with the band. But when Yes hit the road with Downes and Benoit David, and fans took to cyberspace to complain both that Jon Anderson had been shafted and that the band sounded under-rehearsed for their first shows, Downes publicly tore into anyone critical of the band. And it wasn't even constructive feedback -- his comments were juvenile, retaliatory, and personal. The guy did a serviceable job on the keyboard parts he had to cover at the Snoqualmie show, but I still think he's a big jerk. I'm sure artists get tired of sniping, nit-picking fans, but you don't bite the hand that feeds you. You act like a professional and take the high road. And if someone says your playing isn't up to par, maybe you take that into consideration instead of lashing out at the critics.

Finally, Steve Howe. I admit, I've always liked Yes in spite of Steve Howe, not because of him. He's always come off as a self-righteous, joyless, pompous ass, and on this night he was in typical form, as he stepped to his mic to moan in the middle of the show about the venue's "toy PA" system. The thing is, I could probably overlook his unpleasantness if he could pull his weight in the band. For years, fans have complained that the tempos in live performances have been dragging, and at the Snoqualmie show, it was painfully obvious who the culprit was. Steve seemed to strain to hit every note that he squeezed out of his guitar, and he was audibly falling behind the rest of the band as he tried to pick his way through his leads. I realize the dude is 65 years old (though he doesn't look a day over 80 -- he seriously has to be the ugliest man in rock music), but if anyone else couldn't hack it musically in Yes, their days have always been numbered. Yet I don't see anyone trying to push this guy, the unholy love child of Skeletor and Gollum, out the door. I discovered Yes when Trevor Rabin was the guitarist, and I still miss him, even though I know he has zero interest in ever returning to Yes. He's making too much scratch writing and performing movie soundtracks. Too bad, because he can play rings around Steve Howe.

Amazingly, the band didn't play "Owner of a Lonely Heart," which is only their sole No. 1 song in their entire history. But perhaps it was for the best, since Steve always butchers the solo in that song anyway.

So my interest in Yes was piqued, but I can't see myself attending any more shows. Jon Davison is living a dream, and I wish him well. Chris Squire is still the god of the bass guitar, and Alan White is just good old Alan White. Good luck to them all, but I'm spending my money elsewhere next time.

Side note: Procol Harum was the opening act, and they sounded pretty sharp. I think Gary Brooker is the only remaining original member, as most of the rest of the band didn't look old enough to have been born when PH started off in the late '60s. Brooker said he had a cold, but you'd never have known it. His voice has aged beautifully. I only know four PH songs, and the band played two of them -- "A Salty Dog" and "Whiter Shade of Pale." No "Conquistador." Brooker teased us all with the opening line from the PH epic "In Held 'Twas In I," but then he said, "No, we can't play that one. It's 20 bloody minutes long!" And this is a problem how?! Anyway, quite an enjoyable hour of music.

Concert Review: Roger Hodgson at Snoqualmie Casino, Aug. 9, 2012

"I've been to over 90 concerts, and this is the best one I've ever seen!"

So said a guy standing behind me as the VIP section crowded toward the stage for the encore of Roger Hodgson's show. For all I know, it could have been the beer talking and he's one of those guys who loves everything and everyone when he gets tipsy -- but as a veteran of a hundred or so shows myself, I'd say this one ranks in my own top 10.

It was a gorgeous night for an outdoor concert, right around 70 degrees when the show started. Roger kicked things off with the Supertramp hit "Take the Long Way Home," and then he set the mood for the evening by taking a few minutes to say hello to the capacity crowd. The first thing I noticed was how much he smiled, and the next thing that struck me was how humble and gracious he seemed. This is a guy who sold 60 million albums with Supertramp, but he was completely down to earth. He talked about how grateful he is that he's gotten a "second lease on life" with his music and that it still meant so much to so many people after all these years.

See, the thing about Roger is that he left Supertramp in the early '80s, at the height of their fame, because he had small children growing up at home who didn't even know him -- so he walked away from his career to become a family man (now that speaks right to my heart). He built a home recording studio and put out three solo albums in that time -- but he soon realized that he didn't have much name recognition outside Supertramp, which had continued on without him. Around the turn of the century, with his kids grown, he took to the road again and began building a name for himself all over again. Now he's finally receiving critical acclaim for his music as Roger Hodgson, rather than as "that guy from Supertramp," and it's well overdue.

And the songs have endured. Roger says he still loves singing them because to him they're like snapshots in time of his own growth as a person. Anyone who knows Roger's songs knows that he writes introspective lyrics about what it means to love, to seek the truth, to be human. One of his best-known pieces, "The Logical Song," was all about losing the innocence and wonder of youth as we grow up and get stuffed full of facts and rules and opinions. We learn how to act outwardly toward society, but we lose touch with who we are inwardly. "Please tell me who I am," goes the song's most poignant line.

Before moving on, he asked us all to forget our cares for the next two hours and enjoy the music -- and he said he hoped he'd sing a few songs that would touch everyone in the audience and possibly bring back some good memories. "Nothing speaks to our memories like music," he said, and I've found that to be true in my own life. That's why music is by far my favorite artistic medium.

Later, before launching into his beautiful acoustic piece "Even in the Quietest Moments," Roger the Englishman mentioned how he was blown away by the natural beauty of America the first time he came here -- and no place more than the Pacific Northwest. "Do most of you live here?" he asked. "Lucky you," he said in reply to our cheers. He said he wrote "Quietest Moments" when he was out communing with the beauty of nature all around him, and even in the still quiet of the forest he was in, he could feel a nearly palpable energy that reminded him of our connection with something bigger than all of us -- whether you call it nature, God, the universe, or whatever. But in deference to the nice weather, he said he'd save his Supertramp song "It's Raining Again" to the end of the show. "It normally rains a lot here, doesn't it?" he asked, getting lots of knowing chuckles in reply. "Well, I wrote that song before I ever came to Seattle, but if I'd come to Seattle first, maybe I would have written it about your city."

This was the setlist:

Take the Long Way Home
School
In Jeopardy (from his first solo album, In the Eye of the Storm)
Lovers in the Wind (also from Storm)
Hide in Your Shell
Easy Does It
Sister Moonshine
Breakfast in America ("Everybody loved that song but my girlfriend at the time," Roger said.)
Lady
C'est le Bon
A Soapbox Opera
The Logical Song
Death and a Zoo (from his excellent third solo album, Open the Door)
If Everyone Was Listening
Child of Vision
Even in the Quietest Moments
Don't Leave Me Now
Fool's Overture
Dreamer

Encore:

Two of Us
Give a Little Bit
It's Raining Again

The songs that got the biggest reactions were the ones you'd expect: "Give a Little Bit," "The Logical Song," "Dreamer," "Breakfast in America," "Take the Long Way Home," "It's Raining Again." But the most beautiful part of the show for me was when Roger's band left the stage and he sang "Even in the Quietest Moments" all by himself, with just his 12-string guitar. Stripped to its delicate core, the song revealed the fullness of its reverence for the quiet power of nature. You could hear the emotional sincerity in Roger's voice.

And the single biggest treat for me was to see "Fool's Overture," Roger's epic piece that laments the folly of humanity. Roger still captures the soaring, wistful mood of the piece as his high tenor hits the stratosphere, making for a piece that sounds like something Yes could have pulled off back in the '70s. (Little wonder that Roger was asked to replace Jon Anderson when the latter left Yes in the late '80s.) It was a total goosebump moment seeing this one performed live.

The only thing I would have liked was to hear more from Open the Door, which in my book stands right alongside any of his Supertramp work. The swooping majesty of the album's opening cut, "Along Came Mary," played over the PA as Roger and his band left the stage after the encore, but along with Roger's performance of "Death and a Zoo," that's all we got.

But, of course, Roger knew most of the crowd was there to hear Supertramp. And on that, he delivered and then some. He and his band put on an impeccable performance, and his enthusiasm for his music was highly contagious, as we were all smiling and dancing and singing along. Those two hours flew by.

And it never did rain.

Roger says hello.

"Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned / I know it sounds absurd / Please tell me who I am."

"Give a little bit of your love to me ..."

If you love liberty, you might be a terrorist

With another July 4 holiday come and gone, it's worthwhile to reflect on the fact that in today's America, the Founding Fathers would be viewed as terrorists. According to Fatherland Security, one way you can spot a dangerous right-wing terrorist is to notice whether a person is "suspicious of centralized federal authority" or "reverent of individual liberty." I kid you not.

In case these fools have forgotten, we have a Constitution that was written to protect the American people from the overreaching tendencies of centralized government and to secure their individual liberties. Those values are the bedrock our nation was founded on.

The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.-- Terrorist John Adams

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. -- Terrorist Thomas Jefferson

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one. -- Terrorist Thomas Paine

Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests. -- Terrorist George Washington

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. -- Terrorist James Madison

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Terrorist Benjamin Franklin

Give me liberty or give me death. -- Terrorist Patrick Henry

They'd all be in Guantanamo today.

Yeah, you remember Gitmo, right? The terror dungeon that Barky pledged to close but instead is now getting a $40 million upgrade, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Obviously, we need a place where we can keep pumping detainees full of mind-altering drugs -- the same kind the Soviets used to use, no less -- in an attempt to extract information in between waterboardings.

We hear about more and more horrendous stories like this, and as always, the general public doesn't seem to care. Just a sampling of some of the outrageous stories to come down the pike in the past few weeks alone:

• The Pentagon is thinking about giving medals to the cowards who safely operate drones from miles away as they use their remote-control buttons to drop bombs on women and children.
• In another sweeping executive order, Barky decided to give himself complete control over American communication systems in the event of an emergency.
• Fatherland Security is set to employ new laser scanners that will be able to determine virtually anything about you at a molecular level from 50 meters away.
• Cell-phone carriers have reported that the feds asked for private information on their customers, including private communications, 1.3 million times last year -- further evidence that the NSA is conducting an ongoing and massive surveillance sting on the American people.
• A journalist and administration whistleblower claims to have seen a drone spying on him.
• CNN dutifully runs a graphic showing zero civilian deaths this year from drones in Pakistan -- without bothering to explain that the administration has changed its definition of combatants to include any adult male.

You don't hear about any of this in the mainstream press. CNN hasn't even run a retraction of it's Obama-cheerleading graphic. 

Why? Because the mainstream outlets bow to the military-industrial complex (especially when one of their own beloved Democrats is in office) and are owned by corporate interests who want to keep Americans stupid. Tell people what's really going on in the world around them and they might start asking questions. How else to explain these news-magazine covers from back in 2006 and 2007?

While Time and Newsweek ran cover stories for the rest of the world on the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, American readers were treated to a debate on teaching the Bible in school, and a fluff piece on photographer Annie Leibovitz. We mustn't disturb the narrative about how we're fighting to defend American freedom and winning the war on terror. Oh, goodness, no.

It's this same lack of a prominent independent media voice that doesn't let you hear about things like the Obama administration's assassination of an American teenager, or how Osama bin Laden may have been dead for years before Barky claimed credit for his death, or why there are people wondering how the United States gets to be above reproach for its actions while it terrorizes the rest of the world. Even when they're handed a hot story on a silver platter, sometimes the press just doesn't show any interest.

The Obama birth-certificate flap came around again, and after Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced that two computer experts each ran more than 600 tests and found falsifications on the officially released document, the press decided to shoot the messenger. Being faced with documentation that, if truly forged, could mean Obama is not constitutionally eligible to be president, the gathered press ignored the evidence and hurled challenges and insults at Arpaio instead. 

Obama's own literary agent wrote the following biographical blurb back in 1991.

Mainstream-media interest: zero.

Your U.S. media, guardians of the truth, following wherever the facts lead. Or not. 

Arpaio was said to be upset to find out that not even Congress was willing to act on its constitutional duties in examining the evidence on Barky. But this is a Congress that overwhelmingly voted for indefinite detention of American citizens without trial, so it's not a huge surprise that this bunch would shirk its duties in defense of the rule of law. 

It's heartening that at least one brave American hero among the Congressional ranks, Dennis Kucinich, is willing to hold Obama's feet to the fire. Proving that not all liberals are spineless sellouts, Kucinich was instrumental in drafting the letter from 26 members of Congress that challenged Obama to explain his hideous foreign policy. Kucinich elaborated at length in an interview:

We have ventured into a world since 9/11 where international law is set aside and where the implements of war are becoming so ubiquitous that all the rules are being ignored and conflict zones are expanding. Where suspected terrorists – and we do not know what they are really suspected of doing, you know – they can be suspects now, and they can be executed. Or they can just be perceived to be a male of combat age and be executed. 

[ ... ] 

You are looking here at an executive power that is unleashed. Our system of justice, according to the Constitution, is highly structured. There are broad areas of our Constitution that have to do with people being investigated, arrested, charged, having a trial, and then if they are convicted being properly sentenced and incarcerated. 

[ ... ]  

What we have done here with the drone programme is to radically alter our system of justice. Because, remember, if the whole idea is that we are exporting American values, those drones represent American values. And now we are telling the world that American values are summary executions, no rights to an accused, no arrest process, no reading of charges, no trial by jury, no judge, only an executioner. If you have only an executioner that is not justice, that is something else.

[ ... ] 

[W]hen you have assassination programmes that lack any attempt to establish legal justification, then you have journeyed into moral depravity. International law means nothing, laws of war mean nothing.  

[ ... ]  

[S]omeday, I hope it is not going to be too far into the future, somebody is going to look back at this and go "oh my God, why was this permitted?" ... We cannot assume for ourselves the right to impose a war anywhere we well please, and yet we have. 

[ ... ] 

I look at it from my standpoint, as an American, as a member of Congress, what would we do if China, or Russia, or Iran sent a drone over the US? How would we respond? We would see it as, we would see the presence of a drone over our air-space as an act of war, no question about it. And a firing of a drone would invite a full retaliatory response. There is just no question about it, anyone who knows the US know how we would respond to that. Why then does our administration believe that America has some kind of a peremptory position? Why are we immune from international law? Where did we get that special privilege? 

[ ... ]  

[T]he UN Charter was established to protect the sovereignty of every nation and to stop the scourge of war. The United States, as a participant in the UN, has a responsibility not to aggress. Every nation has a right to defend itself, but no nation has the right to aggress against another. We are clearly aggressing against Pakistan, and against Yemen, and against a whole range of countries. This can only lead to more war. With war, these wars, any drone now is an incendiary that spreads war more broadly and it incites more people to join the cause of those who protest the US policies and who seeks to commit violence. 

[ ... ] 

How did the nation, that was founded under such egalitarian principles, find itself running a killing bureaucracy, how did that happen? How did we make that journey? This is clearly a story of a nation that is losing its way in the world to a mixture of fear and hubris.  

[ ... ]  

Killings become too easy, without a justice system to guide it. It is vigilantism conducted by robots. This is a venture into a realm that would have perhaps been conjured by the likes of Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe, but certainly not by Washington or Jefferson. 

[ ... ]  

The only time civilian casualties are used is to articulate a cause for further US involvement in a conflict such as in Syria. There's talk about civilian casualties there, it's a very regretful situation in Syria. And the US will almost daily report on those civilian casualties because there's a cry for intervention. But where there's no interest in intervention, where there’s a desire simply to dominate either militarily, politically, strategically, then you'll see the whole issue of civilian casualties buried. 

Why do they do that? I think the people of the United States would be horrified if they actually understood how many innocent people are being swept up in the maw of these wars. So people are just permitted to sleep. And it's going to be very disturbing for the American people when they awake from the slumber to look out upon a world where there's carnage everywhere that's created by our nation without any legal process, without any constitutional basis and without any articulated justification.

Wouldn't it be great to hear this kind of candid talk about the direction of our country in the presidential debates? To his credit, Ron Paul tried, but he was either cut short or ignored at every turn. It's the radical independent thinkers from each major party that still unabashedly speak truth to power. And that's exactly why the press ignores them.

The media has taken its marching orders well.

Napoleobama

On one hand, the Supreme Court got it right on the Obamacare mandate today: Congress cannot use the Commerce Clause to force people to engage in private commerce. Where they got it wrong was in reinterpreting the law to essentially call the mandate a tax. Since the IRS would collect a fine for not complying with the mandate, Chief Justice Roberts said the penalty is a tax, and therefore, the mandate falls under Congress' constitutional authority to assess and collect taxes.

The problem is that the law as written never characterized the penalty as a tax. Obama himself railed against the notion that the mandate amounted to a tax:

Of course, Obama also campaigned against a health-care mandate in the first place, but then he's made it clear that his hypocrisy knows no bounds.

The Court's dissenting opinion calls out the majority for essentially creating new law out of thin air:

[T]o say that the Individual Mandate merely imposed a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. Judicial tax-writing is particularly troubling.

[...] 

The values that should have determined our course today are caution, minimalism, and the understanding that the Federal Government is one of limited powers. But the Court's ruling undermines those values at every turn.

[...] 

The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our Government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty at peril. Today's decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead, our judgment today has disregarded it.

In short: judicial activism at its worst.

The obvious slippery slope the court has created here is that Congress can now compel the people to engage in any type of activity they want, so long as there's a "tax" imposed for noncompliance.

Willard Mittens Romney claims that if he's elected, he'll repeal the whole Obamacare debacle -- but keep in mind this is the guy who launched Romneycare back in Massachusetts.

If Rand Paul can hold his nose and back the guy, would others do the same just to get this ridiculous mandate off our backs? Keep in mind that the guy has about as much disdain for the Constitution as Obama does, considering that he endorsed the NDAA bill allowing indefinite detention of American citizens, and that he doesn't think the president needs a Congressional declaration to go to war. And his party is still doing everything it can to disenfranchise Ron Paul supporters -- the most recent example being in Romney's own back yard. If nothing else, maybe Rand's endorsement of Mitt will get him a VP nomination, and that would put Rand in a really good spot to make his own run for the Oval Office -- and as far as I'm concerned, Rand is still a friend of liberty.

Not that things could get much worse under Obama. Not only does his health-care travesty survive, but in a brazen act of election-year pandering, he also just decides to override Congress and grant amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants. You wonder if there's anything he won't do to push through his agenda. As the Christian Science Monitor reports:

Jonathan Turley, who usually sides with progressive ideals, tells Politico: "This is a President who is now functioning as a super legislator" who is "effectively negating parts of the criminal code because he disagrees with them. That does go beyond the pale."

And:

"This isn't about immigration but about constitutional order," says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative-leaning think tank. "One problem is that even Democrats in Congress now have no right to complain about future usurpations -- they might as well all go home and have Napoleon run the country."

Makes you wonder what would have happened had the Supreme Court ruled his health plan unconstitutional. Would he have just decreed that he was going to enforce it anyway?

This is the kind of thing that tyrants and dictators do. Not democratically elected leaders of free, law-abiding nations.

Of course, Candidate Obama said his administration would never act like this:

Salient quote:

The issue of executive power and executive privilege is one that is subject to abuse, and in an Obama presidency, what you will see will be a sufficient respect for law and the co-equal branches of government  .

Ha! Oh, if only.

As for executive privilege, he blasted Shrubby for invoking it so much:

Salient quote:

There's been a tendency on the part of this administration to try to hide behind executive privilege every time there's something a little shaky that's taking place.

Fast-forward to today, and we have Barky invoking executive privilege to shield his attorney general from having to turn over subpoenaed documents to Congress. Operation Fast and Furious funneled guns into Mexico in an attempt to track them to drug cartels, and the program blew up in the administration's face when two of those guns were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. To their credit,  members of the House found the attorney general in contempt of Congress.

So much for "the most transparent administration in history." Lies upon lies upon lies.

You know things are bad when a TSA groper brings one woman to tears, another laughs when she spills the human remains of a man's grandfather after poking her finger through the ashes, and the agency has the audacity to charge a passenger with battery for giving an agent a taste of her own medicine -- and it's not the most outrageous news of the week.

And for Obama, you know it's really bad when not just a fellow president, but one from his own party, criticizes America's abusive and reckless foreign policy:

Former president Jimmy Carter has blasted the United States for anti-terror strategies such as targeting individuals for assassination and using unmanned drones to bomb suspected targets, saying they directly flout the basic tenets of universal human rights and foment anti-US sentiment. 

In an article written for the New York Times headlined "A Cruel and Unusual Record", Mr Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work trying to resolve conflicts around the globe, suggested that the US is in violation of 10 of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[...]

"Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation's violation of human rights has extended," Mr Carter wrote, concluding that the US is "abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights".

How does this clown even have any supporters left anymore?

Don't drone me, bro

If you didn't see it splashed across the pages of The New York Times, the very definition of mainstream media, you might think it was a work of dystopian fiction, or the product of a paranoid conspiracy theorist. But no, there it was, on the pages of the Old Gray Lady herself:

Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret "nominations" process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.

Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding "kill list," poring over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre "baseball cards" of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises -- but his family is with him -- it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

"He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go," said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser.

[ ... ]

When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda -- even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was "an easy one."

[ ... ]

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.

[ ... ]

Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government's sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to pore over terrorist suspects' biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die.

This secret "nominations" process is an invention of the Obama administration, a grim debating society that vets the PowerPoint slides bearing the names, aliases and life stories of suspected members of Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen or its allies in Somalia's Shabab militia.

[ ... ]

The nominations go to the White House, where by his own insistence ... Mr. Obama must approve any name. He signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia and also on the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan -- about a third of the total.

In short: The president of the United States unilaterally decides who lives and dies from a "kill list," even if the target is an American citizen, and even if some civilians are murdered in the process -- since anyone in the vicinity of a terrorist was probably "up to no good" anyway.

This is beyond any semblance of checks and balances, or of observing international law. These are, to put it plainly, the actions of an out-of-control dictator.

What may be the most frightening thing is that this is an election year, and you just know the Obama administration fed this story to the Times, in hopes of making the president look tough on terror. It says a lot about just how arrogant and out of touch from reality this administration is that it was apparently never considered that this would paint Obama in the worst possible light, as an out-of-control tyrant who acts as the sole arbiter over the lives of other human beings on a regular basis.

The criticism of this insane policy pulls no punches. From The Nation:

The kill list makes a mockery of due process by circumventing judicial review, and turning the executive into judge, jury and executioner. Even worse, the “signature” strikes described in theTimesarticle, in which nameless individuals are assassinated based merely on patterns of behavior, dispense with any semblance of habeas corpus altogether.

[ ... ]

The drone strikes are inciting even more anti-American hatred in troubled places like Yemen as well as Pakistan. ... It is hard to argue that they are making us safer when, for every suspect killed, one or more newly embittered militants emerge to take his place. This is not a prescription for American security but for an endless war that will sap our moral core and put in jeopardy our most cherished freedoms at home.

 From The Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel, writing in The Washington Post:

Our founders were eager to curb the prerogative of kings to wage war and foreign adventures. That is why the Constitution gave Congress the power to declare war. Yet the president now claims the right to attack anywhere in the world in an apparently endless war against terrorism.

And from AlterNet:

Obama owns his newspeak-drenched "kill list." He decides on a "personality strike" (a single suspect) or a "signature strike" (a group). "Nominations" are scrutinized by Obama and his associate producer, counter-terrorism czar John Brennan. The logic is straight from Kafka; anyone lurking around an alleged "terrorist" is a terrorist. The only way to know for sure is after he's dead. 

And the winner of the Humanitarian Oscar for Best Targeted Assassination with No Collateral Damage goes to … the Barack Obama White House death squad. 

Targeted -- and dissolved -- throughout this grim process are also a pile of outdated concepts such as national sovereignty, set-in-stone principles of U.S. and international law, and any category which until the collapse of the Soviet Union used to define what is war and what is peace. Anyway, those categories started to be dissolved for good already during the Bush administration -- which "legalized" widespread CIA and Special Ops torture sessions and death squads. 

Any self-respecting jurist would have to draw the inevitable conclusion; the United States of America is now outside international law -- as rogue a state as they come, with The Drone Empire enshrined as the ultimate expression of shadow war.

The AlterNet article really says it all. We are a rogue state, indiscriminately flying drones into the airspace of other sovereign nations, whether with their consent or not, and opening fire on alleged terrorist targets and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity. If another nation were doing this, we would openly condemn it -- and we would be right to do so.

At least the U.N. commissioner for human rights is saying something. So are 26 members of Congress -- including Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, two upstanding, principled men from opposite ends of the political spectrum -- who sent a letter to Obama essentially challenging him to justify his actions.

Unfortunately, most of the outrage over the Times story hasn't been about how our president has turned America into a loose cannon that's become virtually indistinguishable from a banana republic. Oh, no. The criticism has been that the story was leaked in the first place, since the revelation could supposedly jeopardize national security, according to treasonous traitors like John McCain. As Vanden Heuvel points out:

Please. Al-Qaeda knows that U.S. drones are hunting them. The Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Afghanis and others know the U.S. is behind the drones that strike suddenly from above. The only people aided by these revelations are the American people who have an overriding right and need to know.

The problem isn't the leaks, it's the policy. It's the assertion of a presidential prerogative that the administration can target for death people it decides are terrorists -- even American citizens -- anywhere in the world, at any time, on secret evidence with no review.

Not that informing the American people about any of this is going to make a whit of difference, since the overwhelming majority of Americans -- 83% -- support our drone attacks overseas.

And that, in a nutshell, is why this country is screwed.

But hey, drones are doing more than killing suspected terrorists, anyone unlucky enough to be near them, and both rescuers who come to collect the bodies and the funerals where the dead are laid to rest. They're coming to the skies over you! Back in February, Obama signed a bill that authorizes the use of drones over American airspace. There could be as many as 30,000 flying over our heads by 2020, and the military is already flying them over our soil; in fact, one just recently crashed in Maryland. Virginia's governor thinks drones over American skies are "great," and the chief of police in Fairfax County, Va., is looking forward to their increased use. They're already being used to spy on American citizens, in a flagrant violation of any reading of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. If these eyes in the sky pick up anything deemed suspicious, the information can be turned over to the police and government agencies, in an obvious end-run around the need for a search warrant. And that's not even to mention the obvious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting the use of the military to enforce domestic law.

In case this point is not clear enough, the United States military is now spying on its own citizens. The information that's gathered is being shared with government agencies and local police -- many of whom are eager to start arming drones, for "crowd control" and the like, of course. Because, of course, the police would never abuse that power.

If this isn't all 1984 enough for you, the British media reports that there are insect-sized drones already in the works that could fly around virtually unnoticed and go pretty much wherever they pleased.

To his eternal credit, Sen. Rand Paul has proposed a bill that would require a warrant before drones could go snooping around through your private affairs. This bill is just common sense, in keeping with our Constitutional rights to privacy and due process. And that's why it will probably be fought tooth-and-nail in Congress, where putting Constitutional restraints on the government is now seen as aiding terrorism.

Naturally, none of this drone activity will actually help us defeat terrorism. If anything, the indiscriminate drone strikes overseas are swelling the ranks of Al Qaeda even more, proving once again that we've learned nothing about blowback. Meanwhile, back on the homefront, we have cops who think they can suspend your First Amendment rights at will; a young man who gets three life sentences for witnessing a drug deal; a mayor who wants to ban big, sugary drinks because he's "simply forcing you to understand" the health consequences of your actions; and a 4-year-old girl terrorized by TSA perverts who order her to "spread her arms and legs" for a search or else cause the entire airport to be shut down over the supposed threat she posed.

Welcome to a nation that continues to delude itself into thinking it's free. A nation that seems to think it has a God-given right to blast the rest of the world to smithereens and force everyone to play by its rules. It seems somehow fitting that even among Obama's supporters, the list of his "accomplishments" is littered with people he's killed.

Pity that the Nobel committee doesn't rescind peace prizes. An even greater pity that all the antiwar protestors during the Bush years turn a blind eye to their hero's warmongering -- which in some cases is even worse than what Bush ever engaged in. But the biggest pity of all is that no one cares that our Constitution is effectively dead. The bad guys didn't even have to put up a fight -- the spineless, cowering masses willingly handed their freedoms over and sealed the deal.

Will the last patriot out please turn off the lights.

Of drones and detention

As Memorial Day 2012 draws to a close, I notice the American flags flying all around and hear people thanking all those who fought in the likes of Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq for "keeping us free." All I can do is look at the flag and think of how much blood has been needlessly shed in its name, how many people have had their lands invaded without cause, how many have been tortured, how many innocent civilians have been "collateral damage," how many atrocities like those at My Lai and Abu Ghraib have been committed.

There have been pretty much three wars in American history that actually defended our freedom: the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and World War II in the Pacific theater. Unless a solider fought in one of those wars, there is no reason to thank him for defending our freedom and protecting our way of life. To the contrary, the illegal engagements we've been involved in since 9/11 have only added to anti-American hatred around the world and bred more terrorists -- because we're doing exactly the kinds of things that led to 9/11 in the first place. We have learned nothing.

And the way this nation slavishly worships anyone in a military uniform is repulsive. The military should be regarded as a horrible last option, when all other attempts at diplomacy have failed -- not as a tool for harassing the rest of the world and bending other nations to our will whenever we darn well feel like it. There is no draft: If people simply refused to serve and fight, these wars could not be fought.

Unless, of course, you replace soldiers with drones. The unmanned planes can indiscriminately drop bombs wherever its controllers want it to -- and with no human element in place when the strike occurs, who knows who's down there on the ground? If we happen to kill some innocent women and kids -- well, that's just the price you pay for fighting the never-ending War on Terror.

 Just look at what your Nobel Peace Prize-winning Commander-in-Chief has accomplished:

Makes you wonder where all the antiwar protests went.

This past weekend alone, drone bombs killed 16 people in Pakistan, including four shoppers at a bakery. In Yemen, hundreds are dying, aided by drone attacks: Up to a dozen civilians were droned to death a few weeks ago -- but that's OK, since the CIA says it's fine to drop bombs even if we're not sure who the targets are.

Naturally, this is not sitting well with the locals under assault despite having done nothing wrong. As antiwar.com puts it:

The bloodshed caused by the Obama administration's offensives in Yemen is probably detrimental to U.S. security. Jeremy Scahill, reporting for Nation, exposed in February after visiting Yemen how U.S. airstrikes that kill civilians and those ill-defined as militants -- along with support for the brutal Yemeni government -- foments anti-Americanism and fuels international terrorism.

Charles Schmitz, a Yemen expert at Towson University in Maryland, told the Los Angeles Times, "The more the U.S. applies its current policy, the stronger Al Qaeda seems to get."

We have learned nothing from 9/11. We have not grasped that blowback is a consequence of our belligerent foreign policy.

And hey, if we're lucky, we can all have drones flying overhead at home to spy on all of us -- in the name of national security, of course.

It's already starting. The FAA recently relaxed rules allowing law enforcement to use drones in Los Angeles County. Elsewhere, a SWAT team recently borrowed a drone from Fatherland Security to make sure it was safe to arrest a rancher over a dispute involving six cows. If you're one of those people who thinks "I don't have to worry about any of this, because I don't have anything to hide," keep this story in mind. This is not a terrorist we're talking about -- it's a rancher in a dispute over some cows. This is what happens when you let the government intrude more and more into our lives and liberties because you're cowering in fear over whatever bogeyman the state has decided to scare you with today.

At least there are victories of a sort and I-told-you-sos on a few fronts. First is the admission from a former TSA executive that whole-body scanners have never resulted in a terrorist-related arrest. Will it make any change in the farce that is Airport Security Theater? Probably not, but it's good to feel vindicated.

Second is the good news that a federal judge has blocked the enforcement, for now, of the indefinite-detention provision of NDAA that O'Bomber signed into law when no one was looking:

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges, who was one of the plaintiffs in the case, told Russia Today that the impact of the decision was "huge."

"It invalidates a law," he explained, "that was, of course, signed by the president on New Year's Eve and permitted the U.S. military -- overturning about 200 years of domestic law -- to engage in domestic policing, to seize U.S. citizens, to hold them in military facilities, including our offshore penal colonies, to strip them of due process, and to detain them … until the end of hostilities, whenever that is."

Hedges emphasized that a major factor in the judge's decision was that the government lawyers were unable to say for certain that he and the other reporters and activists who brought the suit would never be subject to the provisions of the law as enacted.

"We went through the State Department terrorism list," he stated, "and in the course of my twenty years as a foreign correspondent, most of them with The New York Times, I had direct contact with seventeen of those groups, including al Qaeda. And there's no exemption in this provision for journalists."

He also noted that his fellow plaintiffs were particularly concerned that "by linking legitimate dissent to terrorist organizations, the military could be used to crush any kind of protest."

Hedges called the ruling "a tremendous step forward for the restoration of due process and the rule of law." Naomi Wolf was even more exuberant; she said of the judge:

"She is so completely, obviously right. It's nothing short of treason to have put forward legislation like this, let alone to have had most of the people who represent us and our president sign off on this clearly, obviously criminally unconstitutional -- unconstitutional is inadequate. It's anti-constitutional. It's dictatorial."

It should have been obvious to anyone that you can't deny American citizens due process, and that you can't write a bill so vague and far-reaching that it essentially shuts down free speech by turning every critic of American policy a potential terrorist suspect. Yet the vast majority of Congress signed off on it, and former Constitutional law professor Barack Obama signed it into law -- after insisting that the provision for indefinite detention of American citizens be included in the bill.

But never fear: The tyrants, dictators, and traitors weren't done. On May 18, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state and Rep. Justin Amash, a sharp young Paulestinian from Michigan, drafted an amendment that would have repealed the indefinite-detention provision for good. The amendment was defeated, with critics saying it would have enabled terrorists.

That's right. Members of the United States Congress now argue, without embarrassment, that defending Constitutional liberties ENABLES TERRORISTS.

Instead, Congress passed an amendment led by Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, and Scott Rigell, a Republican from Virginia, that essentially says nothing. It states that NDAA will not "deny the writ of habeas corpus or deny any Constitutional rights for persons detained in the United States under the AUMF [Authorization for the Use of Military Force] who are entitled to such rights."

As Amash pointed out:

The first part of the amendment does nothing. In other words, if you have constitutional rights, then you have constitutional rights.

The ACLU made a detailed case against it:

The question with the NDAA was never whether habeas rights are lost. Instead, the question is whether and when any president can order the military to imprison a person without charge or trial. The NDAA did not take away habeas rights from anyone, but it did codify a dangerous indefinite detention without charge or trial scheme. And nothing in the proposed bill by Rigell would change it. The Rigell bill won't stop any president from ordering the military lockup of civilians without charge or trial.

And there's more. Not only is it a useless bill, but it could end up causing harm too. It doesn't accurately and fully list who is entitled to habeas (for example, it doesn't even mention American citizens traveling outside the country), which could end up causing confusion.

They are hoping you will fall for their trick and waste all your time and energy on something meaningless -- and not fight for legislation that actually protects people from indefinite detention without charge or trial.

And people did fall for the trick. But then, weasel words intended to mollify the American public are nothing new with NDAA, with the detention provision itself stating that the military is not "required" to detain American citizens. The military is not required to -- but it still can. The choice of words is downright Clintonian in its effort to distract people from what's really going on. 

It's tough in this ongoing fight to even know who's on your side. Adam Smith is no friend to peace and liberty, despite his support of the repeal of indefinite detention. He voted for NDAA in the first place, and he now supports lifting a ban on the government dissemination of propaganda.

You wonder why the government would feel the need to fill us all with propaganda, until you run across a purportedly leaked document from the U.S. Army detailing how "re-education camps" will work, including the employment of people charged with fostering detainees' appreciation of U.S. policy and weeding out rabble-rousers amongst the detainees. These camps are said to be set up for use on U.S. soil, and in case there's any doubt as to whether Americans would be targeted for detainment, one part of the document refers to identifying captives by their Social Security numbers -- something a member of Al Qaeda is not likely to possess.

Talk of FEMA camps around the country has been going on for a long time now. It sounds crazy, but you have at least one member of Congress railing against the Occupy movement and emphasizing how important it is to prevent the Occupiers from shaping policy, and you have Fatherland Security monitoring the entire movement. We've all seen how the militarized cops have been cracking down on the protests all over the country. Let's face it -- these are the people who, like them or not, are announcing to the world that the emperor has no clothes. They pose a direct threat to the corporate ruling class, which in turn controls the two major political parties. They won't tolerate a threat to their power, and since they own most of the politicians in D.C., including the president, they'll do the corporations' bidding.

Yeah, it all sounds like fringe conspiracy-theory stuff, but as it's been said:

Food for thought. And at the very least, no one has ever died from turning off the TV and doing some critical thinking.

You're free, as long as you comply.

In Seattle, Occupy-inspired peaceful May Day protests turned violent when a band of masked, hooded anarchists infiltrated the crowd. With lawmakers cracking down on peaceful assembly in this country, always in the name of "national security," these people do us all no favors.

But then what if it's the government doing the infiltrating, in an attempt to bring discredit to the Occupy movement? (Or, more conspiratorially, what if the Occupy movement itself was an invention of the feds to more easily bring about popular support for a de facto police state?)

There's no debating that the FBI and other government agencies send their members undercover to essentially goad people into committing crimes. That's what happened in Cleveland on May Day, and it's happened time and time again since 9/11 -- with the end result that the government, for all practical purposes, creates a terror plot for the purpose of foiling people and groups who may or may not have acted out on their own. The feds hand over the incendiaries, the vehicles, and any number of other weapons, wait for their targets to act, make their arrests, and then go on TV to beat their chests and blather about how they've foiled yet another terror plot.

The upshot from this activity is a chilling effect on free expression. If someone goes online to decry the overreaching antics of our government, will that person get a visit from a stranger who "feels just like they do" and "encourages them to take action"? If you don't fall in line like a dutiful citizen and keep your mouth shut, is your government just waiting to entrap you?

As Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com put it, in reference to the Cleveland incident:

In short, it is a propaganda exercise designed to show that the feds need all the "legal tools" given to them by the "Patriot" Act -- and that these incursions on our constitutional rights need to be preserved and extended. It's propaganda aimed at keeping Americans fearful, so that they'll surrender what is left of their rights to a government ready, willing, and eager to extend its authority into every aspect of our lives -- in the name of "fighting terrorism." Our phony "war on terrorism" on the international front has given the government a blank check to descend on Americans and root out "subversion" while trampling on free speech and narrowing the range of permissible dissent.

The Bill of Rights has been turned on its head. Instead of keeping the government out of your life, now the government says you have the freedom to speak your mind, peacefully protest, and be secure in your personal effects from unreasonable search and seizure only when the government says it's OK and not a threat to "national security."

Just ask Laura Poitras, Jacob Applebaum, and William Binney, who were all interviewed by the Democracy Now! program. Poitras, a filmmaker, has made a number of movies relating to the post-9/11 world, including examinations of Iraq, Yemen, and Guantanamo Bay. Applebaum has worked for WikiLeaks. Binney spent nearly four decades at the NSA. Poitras and Applebaum have been detained numerous times at airports and had their phones and computers confiscated. Applebaum, in particular, was handcuffed, denied access to a lawyer while being interrogated, and told that he "wouldn't do well in prison," where he'd be sexually assaulted. Binney left the NSA after the agency removed safeguards shielding citizens' identities post-9/11. After speaking out, the FBI stormed his house and pointed a gun at his head as agents demanded to sit down and have a friendly chat with him.

Binney warns that the government has records of most of our online communications and is building a massive spy center in Utah, where data mining of all our personal information will be taken to a new extreme.

Oh, sure, I can still come online and complain about all this and not be hauled off to some gulag somewhere -- but as Raimondo brilliantly points out, that's part of the game the government plays. With new tools and laws at its disposal every day, the government can easily intercept and collect any amount of information it wants about you. And so if you ever speak out and try to get the masses fired up, that's when the detentions and intimidations begin. They have a full dossier on you, and they'll hold all the cards. So as you go about your daily life, you're left with the illusion that you're free to speak your mind, and we're still democratic and wonderful and out to catch those Bad Guys in foreign lands who mean to do us harm. As long as you keep your head down and your mouth shut, no harm will come to you.

Do you think that's how a free society is supposed to operate? As Glenn Greenwald said on Salon, in reference to Poitras, Applebaum, and Binney:

Whether a country is actually free is determined not by how well-rewarded its convention-affirming media elites are and how ignored its passive citizens are but by how it treats its dissidents, those posing authentic challenges to what the government does. The stories of the three Democracy Now guests -- and so many others -- provide that answer loudly and clearly.

Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng knows how people are treated in his country when they stand up against the status quo. Chen left the protection of the U.S. embassy after being told that Chinese officials would beat his wife to death otherwise. "Guaranteeing citizens' rights in China is empty talk," Chen said, underscoring the reality that China remains a brutal, oppressive dictatorship, despite all the rosy talk about free-market economic reforms.

It all makes you wonder how long it will be until the situation there is indistinguishable from the situation here -- or how long it will be until this iconic scene plays out somewhere on the streets of America:

And if it does happen here, it's not going to be pretty.

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then." -- Thomas Jefferson