For a moment, let’s set aside the other attendant issues; privacy, better ways to spend money, and the contestable reality of a threat that justifies such excesses.  Let’s look at the health question.  These machines stand in open, crowded, and filthy areas.  They get infrequent and, almost certainly, inadequate maintenance.  The people running them don’t even need a high school diploma or basic literacy to get the job.  The scanners lack radiation alarms and, until recently, their operators did not wear dosimeters.

…it now takes an Act of Congress to force the U.S. Government to conduct actual investigation into wantonly showering the populace with radiation.

Right here, we’ve got problems.  Any doctor who so callously exposed her patients to radiation would be stripped of her license.  Any radiation technician who took such shoddy care of the equipment he uses would be fired.  Any hospital that tolerated such carelessness would lose accreditation.  The government justifies such laws on the medical use of radiation based on the inherent danger.  This is the stuff that mutates your cells, turns yours bone into crumbly mush, and inflicts giant ill-tempered lizards on the Orient.

Why then, are we operating under the asinine fallacy that radiation isn’t harmful if we say it’s for security rather than therapy?  Radiation is radiation.  It doesn’t read policy memos and it doesn’t care that Homeland Security sees to be willing away the unstable isotopes.  Whatever alternate universe the politicians are on, here in reality, radiation is a threat and we’re all at higher risk.  Higher risk not just because of the roll-out of scanners at airports, but because of the government’s fetish for adding the things in every public place from sea to shining sea.

Washington tells us it’s all perfectly safe.  They, of course, can’t actually share any of the evidence they swear to possess with us peons, national security and all.  Even were all that tip-top evidence to exist, the outrageous laxity of radioactive machines popping up all around us is a problem.  Simply put, intelligent people aren’t so frivolous to a known carcinogen.

Finally, there may be some movement on the impending irradiation of the Land of the Free.  Principally authored by Susan Collins (R-ME), and with bipartisan sponsorship, the study sign bill would require that DHS contract with an independent lab to test radiation levels.

Last fall, John Pistole, the TSA Administrator who would not rule out cavity searches at airports, finally promised Congress that he would preform just such a study.  Within days, he reneged, saying that DHS’ own private studies concluded there was radiation risk.  That study, naturally, is not available for citizens to review.  TSA officials brazenly insist that no one will get cancer from the ionizing radiation of scanners, an alarming level of certainty with no basis for belief.

Europe has already banned the use of such scanners over radiation concerns.  ProPublica concluded that no peer-reviewed work on the safety of backscatter x-rays has been done and that the TSA may have glossed over safety problems with the machines.  Scientists who have been publicly named by the TSA as supporters of the use of radiation in passenger screening have reacted angrily, accusing the agency of misrepresenting their work for its own agenda.  The National Academy of Science has espoused a linear model of radiation risk, meaning that cancer risk grows over time with increased exposure, finally concluding that no amount of radiation, small as it may be, is entirely safe.

The FDA declined to invoke its power to regulate non-medical use of radiation, opting to rely on the TSA voluntarily seeing to the safety of the machines.  In turn, the TSA ignored the requirement to consider public comment and paid no heed to research that suggested the machines posed a risk.  In short, there exists little data, none of it up to academic snuff.

What this means, boys and girls, is that it now takes an Act of Congress to force the U.S. Government to conduct actual investigation into wantonly showering the populace with radiation.  The level of disregard for citizens this evinces ought to concern us all.

Sen. Collins will introduce her bill soon.  Until then, we may at least hope that, when the radiation turns us all into mutants, our superpowers will be enough to extract a bloody vengeance from Washington.

No, you can’t opt out.

What’s being handed from FB over to Politico are your status updates.  In theory, all status updates containing the name of a Presidential candidate will be culled, anonymized, and tabulated.  Politico will be perusing them for political leanings, so as to improve their analytics for 2012.  I’ve long through Politico is fine and dandy for news, but had never considered them a top pick for predictions…soooo, maybe they need the help.

Thus far, all these datapoints have led Politico to suss out the sleeper story that Mitt Romney is leading the GOP pack.  Um…way to pick up on what everyone else missed, boys?

Or maybe Politico and the eleventy-bazillion contributors they are potentially sharing your info with should do their own damn fieldwork.  Now, for those of you worried about yet another intrusion on your privacy, PPC has a suggestion.

Start off with a status update that names some ’12 contender, yet doesn’t actually contain an opinion of said contender’s platform.  For instance:

“Eileen just spent three hours staring at Mitt Romney’s hair and it NEVER MOVED.”

Wait an hour or so and then duplicate the status, switching out only the candidate’s name:

“Eileen just spent three hours staring at Rick Santorum’s hair and it NEVER MOVED.”

You might easily go through the entire roster of surviving players at any time.  For added fun, use a timer to guarantee your updates are precisely spaced.

Next, start throwing in buzzwords.  Do this right and you can get the attention not only of Politico but of Homeland Security.

“Eileen would like to put Brack Obama in indefinite detention.”

“Eileen has no interest in assassinating Newt Gingrich’s character.  The man needs no help from me.”

After that, toss off a status update acting like you’re just getting old news:

“Eileen can’t believe Herman Cain left the race.  I totally did not see that coming”

Similar to this, on a day when big news about one candidate comes out, don”t so much as mention his name.  Just babble about every candidate but the one who’s the story.

Next, display truly alarming emotions:

“Eileen needed three Ambiens and a fifth of cheap table wine just to process the news that Jon Huntsman is leaving the race.”

“Eileen finally perfected her Michelle Bachman hairstyle!!!!  OMG!!!! Supercute!!!!”

Make comments that indicate you have no idea what’s actually going on in the race.

“Eileen is so proud to be supporting the candidate who just aced the debate!  Go, Gary Johnson.”

“Eileen is already planning her Alaskan themed inaugural party for when Sarah Palin wins it all.”

For the slightly more advanced user, try to start some rumors of your own.  Remember, you have the most latitude in pretending to have seen something salacious if you are in D.C. or in the location of the current primary:

“Eileen just saw Ron Paul and Rick Perry walk out the back room at Shelly’s, together.”

“Eileen just snuck onto the Rick Santorum campaign bus.  Who knew that vodka came in Jeroboams?”

If geography is not on your side, allude to the mailer you just got or pretend you’ve just turned up some ancient photograph that has front page written all over it.

Allude to damning report cards, Polaroids from the early 70s, and unedited drafts of incendiary speeches.

What if falsely cultivating something lascivious and damning isn’t quite ‘it’ for you?  You might still aim to muddy the waters with groundless speculation masquerading as fact.

“Eileen hadn’t really considered the viability of a Ron Paul/Gary Johnson ticket, but after that press release, she sees the merits.”

If you do this, have no compunction about citing campaign ads that don’t exist and press conferences that never happened.  We all need to keep the media on their toes.

Another fan favorite is spewing nonsense that still sounds impressive:

“Eileen is gravely worried over the Azerbaijani’s Minister’s comments on the Obama defense platform.  Oh, well, totally in the Senate’s hands, now.”

The beauty here is that it hardly matters if Azerbaijan even has a minister in Washington, or if any treaty is in play.  Have fun with this one.  Lying to people who try to steal your private information is a moral good.

Next, throw in the names of people who aren’t running in 2012, but who are still peripheral figures.  Hint at having seen Nancy Pelosi’s head of communications in hushed conversation with Michelle’s Bachman’s chief of staff.  Mention that you just RSVP-ed to an event where George Bush is speaking on Rick Perry’s behalf.  Say a friend just took a job with Sarah Palin; make it sound like the old bat is gearing up for a late entry.

You could even talk about whatever it is you actually want your FB friends to know and then toss in some bastard’s name to make work for Politico:

“Eileen is finally off parole!  Drinks tonight!  Buddy Roemer.  Rick Santorum.  Barack Obama.”

“Eileen’s parole party got a little out of hand.  I think I violated the Mann Act.  Gary Johnson.  Newt Gingrich.”

Alternately, when you do want to say something about politics, just misspell or alter a candidate’s name enough to throw off some trolling program.  Personally, I like giving people nicknames:  President Obama becomes, “Barry, the Big O,” Rick Perry is “Texas Rocky” and Newt Gingrich is “Lizard Man.”  Or some such.

For the truly spiteful, remember that your status need not actually communicate anything other than your contempt.  Let fly with utter argle-bargle.

“Eileen hippodrome toothbrush lost in the blender Rick Perry big green glow in the dark Ron Paul dancing ligers.  Snarf.  Precancerous mole.  Piggily.  Newt Gingrich. Bamboo.  Hot chocolate muffin.”

Step up even that with foreign words and made-up language:

“Eileen umlaut-sil-vous-Platte-river Barack Obama.  Jabberwocky Chisinau post-haste S.P.Q.R. Buddy Roemer con leche Blutwurst.”

Once all this wears thin, just make you status full of links to Politico’s rival sites.

Alright, so the ‘Inspire’ email tells Obamanauts to send in cash (of course) and the names and emails of their known Republican associates.  Yes, it is horrid that the most powerful man alive wants a list of people known to oppose him.  The schtick is that Barry will send along a little note letting the right winger in question know she ‘inspired’ a donation to him.  There is a decidedly unsavory aroma coming off this; how immature have you got to be to go around bribing politicians to taunt your ‘friends’?  And at Christmas.

Were I a bleeding heart recipient of this communique, I would also wonder at why my guy wants to know so much about how many friends I have on the other side.  The official word from the Presidential camp is that the emails aren’t saved.  I doubt that.

Per the White House, there is nothing to this beyond letting Republicans know (yet again – yawn) that the President sees them not as opponents but as enemies.  If I believe this at all, it’s only because the President has better ways of identifying and keeping tabs on his detractors.  Notice I don’t deny for one second that I think Obama keeps a very close eye on anyone with stature who disagrees with him.

What should worry Barry’s faithful is the man’s penchant for creepy and vaguely totalitarian behavior.  This is, after all, the braintrust that gave us AttackWatch, itself a follow-up to gimmicks from the 2008 race that asked voters to report on any and all anti-Obama media.

How does he keep getting it so wrong?  Or is he getting it right for the certain demographic.  National Review thinks so, pegging the email as a savvy piece of psychological marketing; it’s juvenile and cruel because Obama’s core supporters are juvenile and cruel.

Really, though, no matter how one looks at it, this is unsettling.  If we agree with the paranoid view and assume the President is trying to generate a masterlist of every American who doesn’t get suitably worked up for him, what kind of monster have we elected?  If we limit ourselves to seeing this as a rather smug and childish man indulging his vitriolic streak and using the weight of his office to tell others it’s just fine to do so, don’t we still have quit a problem?  Didn’t Obama campaign as the hero who would clean up the generally nasty and biting tone of politics?

Even if none of the most conspiratorial theories possible here aren’t true, this is still a massive misstep for the Christmas season and a gross lack of leadership.  Arguably, when north of 100 million people don’t like the job you’re doing, some introspection is in order.  I, for one, think a dismissive taunt that your opponents aren’t at all worth considering falls rather short.  Well we’re at it, might we say Obama and his team, with their ongoing fixation on sussing out any and all criticism, are the paranoid ones?

Michael Moore pulled this in the 1980s. You’d think people who can dream up such elaborate, baroque fantasies about the Koch Brothers would be able to divert at least a smidgen of their imaginative abilities to devising new and interesting tactics for their “truth-telling” crusade.

And is it just me, or is a “Progressive” patting himself on the back for his “truth-telling” a bedsheet-sized red flag that anything he says is a brazen lie?

**Update 2**: Mace and pepper balls used, 20 arrested

Today’s ‘Occupy Denver’ clash included reports of tear gas, rubber bullets or pepper balls, and several arrests.

According to Tweets from @MediaMarcus, Rep. Perlmutter said he “put career on line” by attending the protest, but was later cognizant of threat posed by not announcing his attendance as a Congressman. The Twitter reports indicate Perlmutter was caught up in crowd, but stayed to chat with protesters.

**Update** From the Post:

During the mid-afternoon stalemate, U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter waded into the crowd alone but for a bullhorn, urging protesters to remain as peaceful as they had been during his previous visit. A few in the crowd drowned his words, shouting that it was the cops in assault gear who needed to tone it down, not them.

“Obviously you’re making an impression,” said Perlmutter, the Seventh District Democrat. “You’ve got to de-escalate this thing.”

“We want jobs!” a man shouted back. “Democrats won’t get elected anymore!”

Others standing near Perlmutter defended him to the crowd. “He’s the only elected official who bothered to come down here today,” one said.

Great photos of the day’s activities via the Post.

Much hilarity ensued.  Just to prove that I am not a wicked and greedy Capitalist pig, I will happily socialize the fruits of my amusement.

In the month since its inception, the Peoples’ Library has amassed 1,647 volumes, 102 of them in the past 24 hours.  I hope you will join with me in appreciating the work this represents; even if one removes all the duplicate copies of Chomsky and New Age hogwash, I think we may be satisfied that OWS-ers are not entirely allowing their minds to rot.

Below, I have distilled the list to find the most seminal titles in the OWS collection.  I have also made, humbly, some suggestions for further acquisitions.  I have even taken the liberty of recommending a little Stalinesque purging here and there.

Part I : What to Read

1. The Berenstein Bear Scouts Meet Bigpaw, by Stan Berenstein

Oddly enough, most of the websites dedicated to the Western literary cannon lack a detailed review of this short work.  Going by the cover illustrations, this seems to be a heteronormative story of uniformed, fair skinned male cubs assaulting nature.  Nature in this instance is represented by a ill-disposed bright red naked bear.  Reading the text as an American answer to Anglo stories of ‘The Green Man’ has somehow yet to be anyone’s doctoral dissertation.  Perhaps a bored occupant could get the scholarship started.  Bigpaw was produced as a television special around the time of the 1980 Presidential election and is, therefore, not recommended for older protesters with sore memories.

Alternately, the entire series drove noted right wing curmudgeon Charles Krauthammer to villify the, “the smugness and complacency of the stories that is so irritating…[particularly] the post-feminist Papa Bear, the Alan Alda of grizzlies, a wimp so passive and fumbling he makes Dagwood Bumstead look like Batman.”  So, if it helps, just consider that, somewhere out there, the continued existence of this book is irritating a Fox News contributor.

2. Cows of our Planet: A Far Side Collection, by Gary Larson

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the inclusion of Larson’s 1992 magnum opus in an overtly Progressive library is that, for all the bovine focus, the effect of methane on ‘climate change’ is completely neglected.  However, a semiotic meaning of the text yields delightful tid bits on vegetarianism, equal rights for quadripeds, and  what to look for in leather in next year’s collections.

3. Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny, by Cintra Wilson

I initially thought this was a plea to turn this fair land over to the benevolent reign of some bestial community organizer.  To be fair, look at whose library we’re raiding.  It is, however, an almost painfully broad satire arguing that, diligence and merit aside, America is run by a handful of old families.  BoingBoing favorably reviewed the book in 2008 and posted the first chapter, which is somewhat funny.  We here at PPC are firmly of the opinion that, at least in politics, the best and brightest are rarely in charge, so we’ll go with the idea.

As a side note for the OWS crowd, while the 17th Amendment was an utter disaster, we do not condone the Caligula approach to electing Senators, either.

4. Dim-mak: Death Point Striking, by Erle Montaigue

Essentially, this is the art of murdering people with acupuncture…as written by someone called Erle Montaigue.  It’s only as ancient as 1950s Hong Kong pulp fiction, but I know all of us in the Secret Treehouse HQ of PPC would love to see it work.

If only to ensure you don’t inadvertently kill a friend with a massage gone awry, we must mark this as indispensable reading for the touchy-feely set.

5. The Manga Guide to Statistics, by Shin Takahashi

Mr. Takahashi has explained basic statistical concepts in graphic novel format.  Our would just got a little happier knowing that such a thing even exists.  3.43% happier (± 1%) at 95% confidence, to be precise.

6. Republican Party Reptile, by P.J. O’Rourke

That someone placed a copy of this into a Peoples’ Library makes me think there’s hope for the OWS types after all.  At least someone out there has a sense of humor.  Ditto for the lone Tom Robbins inclusion.

Part II : What to Burn

1. Al on America, by Al Sharpton

Kids, really.  I get your entire lefty schtick.  But it’s time to draw the line.

2. The Book of Lies, by Aleister Crowley

Some have called this the most ‘approachable’ of the noted Satanist’s corpus.  Others have noted that it’s still incomprehensible babble produced by a bigoted Victorian prick who’d ruined his brain with poor quality heroin.  As a child, Crowley shot, stabbed, skinned, poisoned, defenestrated, drowned, crushed, boiled, and blew up the same feline to test the theory that cats have nine lives.  Do what you will, but we cannot condone this man as a role model for the ostensibly non-violent OWS movement.  We are, however, impressed with his dedication to the scientific method.

(We also recommend purging the multi-volume selection of Edgar Cayce nonsense.)

3. Eco-sex : Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable, by Stefanie Iris Weiss

For those of you whose life is missing a sustainably sourced chrome finish vibrator, or for those of you dull enough to think that avocados are just for guacamole and face masks…this is your book.  Miss Weiss’ strident support for OWS on her blog makes us think this book may have been donated in the hopes of inspiring carbon neutral, class conscious intimacy in a pestilential tent city.  We’d suggest she really wants to move product, but that’s so capitalistic.

For our part, it is never wise to pursue sexual activities that will turn any part of you green.  We recommend burning, followed by thorough disinfection of the entire area.  If you are looking to replace the gap on your book shelf, please look for my forthcoming title on unabashedly elitist coitus, ‘Capitalism: Conquest and Climax.’

4. Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, by David Icke

A television sports commentator gone bonkers, Mr. Icke maintains the planet is currently run by evil blood-drinking (and possibly kitten-eating) lizard aliens disguised as politicians.  This, we feel, is a discredit to many fine lizards.

It has been suggested that poor David is really our modern day Jonathan Swift, studiously maintaining the pretense of believing in his reptillian overlords from Draco in order to demonstrate…something.  We can only hope.

Speaking of…why the hell don’t you people have any Swift?  Go barter, or however it is you do acquire property, and get yourself A Modest Proposal.

5. If the Ring Fits (Harlequin Special Edition), by Cindy Kirk

The other humans cannot take you seriously if you own romance novels.

6. Manual of Nephrology, from the McGraw-Hill Education Series

Stick to political carousing and leave my kidneys the hell alone.  Between your views on health care and on communal ownership, I am frankly terrified that you own this text.

7. Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith, by William F. Buckley, Jr.

No wonder you hate the Right.

8. The Universal Standard Encyclopedia Volume 1: A – Argolis, edited by Joseph Laffan

A single volume of a 1958 encyclopedia.  Methinks someone is using you to dump unwanted books.

Then again, it could be a doomed but noble bid to educate the lot of you on where this country has been.

Part III : What to Acquire

1. Erle Montaigue and Wally Simpson, The Encyclopedia of Dim-Mak, along with Montaigue’s Advanced Dim-mak: The Finer Points Of Death-Point Striking

Might as well complete the set

2. Any of the Cthulhu works by H.P. Lovecraft

You cannot fight evil until you understand it.

3. Key foundational texts

You have neither Smith nor Marx yet you are speaking to the great divide between economic systems.  You seek to remake America, but have you considered her beginnings?  Where is your Federalist, you Democracy in America*, your basic pocket book of Founding Documents?  You’ve got plenty of agenda laden analyses of seminal texts.  Why not get the actual text and do your own thinking?

* Since the first draft of this article, you have added de Tocqueville.  Well done.  Carry on.

4. How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie

You’re trying to sell a platform and the whole not-taking-baths thing is costing you points.  You have got to make them up somewhere.

I will start by sharing some of my thoughts on the alleged intellectual majesty and mystery of the shenanigans currently gripping America.  One thing I must give the OWS monkeys right off the bat is that they have nicely demonstrated that irate protest may thrive in the total absence of coherent motives.

However, Eric Hoffer long ago noted that mass movements don’t need a God but they absolutely must have a Devil.  Did you catch what I was doing there?  That’s right, kids; I was being intellectual.  I have proved that I read books, and understand at least some of them.  If my bet, that most people accept what they see in print and don’t do their own research, is correct (and it is), I could just as easily have claimed that Hoffer’s real assertion was that politically confused naifs will sell out their cause for Starbucks on a chilly day.

Such blather makes up the article I am keen to lambaste.  Author Dan Berrett basically noticed that pseudo-Marxist polemicists have decamped from faculty lounges and alternative book stores to preen and squawk over a walking, talking, sign-waving sociology dissertation.  Wherever two or more petulant lefties of average intellect are gathered, so also is an academic leftie with dreams of being first author.  (When right-wingers congregate in similar numbers, the academy maintains a healthy distance and remotely diagnoses psychological maladies.)  

Berrett’s giddiness over all the academic celebrities flocking around OWS is not, as he maintains, a purely abstract meditation on what it all means.  It is an entirely predictable market function.  Academics live on what is called “Publish or Perish”.  By nature and by need they are always looking for something interesting enough to make it past peer review and get a few citations.  The attendance of the Ivory Tower set at a prolonged anti-Capitalist screed event betrays the market realities of everything humans do far more than the titular ‘intellectual roots’.

However, I did not read through Barrett’s entire piece in order to agree with myself about how pompous most intellectuals are, or how they are endlessly pretending it’s all about knowledge and not at all about ego or paycheck.  Though Berrett tosses in some ideas about OWS properly being a grassroots phenomenon, he spends most of his effort of crediting professional intellectuals for the spread of the protests.  Berrett favorably cites the ethnography of one David Graeber, who spent time in the jungles of Madagascar studying the Betafo people.  Graeber noticed that, without a strong, central government, the Betafo were still capable of cooperating and completing projects.  It took him 20 months to figure this out and he trumpeted it to the world as a watershed idea, the entire millenia old body of libertarian though having apparently escaped him.

The Betafo are descendants of slaves left behind on Madagascar when the state bugged out, having more of less decided it had better things to do then pester humans.  This, I would like to tell Mssrs. Berrett and Graeber, is not a vindication of far-left anarchy.  It is a libertarian fantasy come true.  The success of the Betafo also testifies to the validity of many small-government, market-dominated ideas.  According to Graeber, it never occured to the Betafo to seek out or create a top heavy state, nor did it occur to them they were somehow deprived without such an apparatus.  They just figured out what they needed and took care of it.  That humans are capable of such spontaneous order, self-direction, and granular level planning is a key free market argument.

What Graeber calls “consensus decision making” is really just Spontaneous Order with a new name.  No self-respecting wonk could, of course, use such a term as it implies the ghastly idea that people can do plenty without intellectuals thinking it up first.  Much of Berrett’s article is, in fact, just that – an attempt to find direct academic ancestors to the OWS protests.  Why it would be so awful to admit that people took to the streets for some reason other than the dense prose of Ivy League luminaries is beyond me.  These are angry people with some legitimate complaints who are pursuing a remedy to a felt need.

Yes, the sort of real brains who define entire eras and movements develop truly new ideas or effect a near miracle by capturing something amorphous and nascent already in a lot of peoples’ heads.  But a great many of the scribbling class are actually analyzing, synthesizing, explaining, and cataloging.  I believe all that has benefit, but it is reactionary stuff; it comes after people (some of whom don’t even have one advanced degree) are already engaged in something.  I will also concede that there are feedback loops; as much as intellectuals get grist for the mill from observing, so people are influenced by what they read.

What has me ticked off is Berrett’s assertion that OWS must somehow be consciously acting on some scholar’s brilliant words and his subsequent mission to figure out who that might be.  Obviously, he likes Graeber, who returned from Madagascar to organize some of the first anti-globalization stunts in London.  This, Berrett holds, is sufficient to credit Graeber as something of an academic sperm donor to OWS.

Who else, though, he wonders.  It surprises Berrett to find a growing ‘Peoples’ Library‘ at the Zuccotti Park protest site in New York.  People have contributed their own titles and someone has taken the initiative to keep the books in boxes with plastic sheeting to block water, a verified instance of organic cooperation that could only ever surprise a socialist.  OWS even has a librarian, who delivers a vicious backhanded compliment when he purrs, “I really am amazed for the respect they have for the word”, as if it should be expected that the protesters are all bumpkins.  He adds, “There’s a real reverence for what has been written that has surprised me, since they eschew whatever came before, all the thought that came before.”

No, you blustering twit.  OWS members are not contemptuous of all that came before.  They are perfectly happy to recreate all sorts of mayhem that fizzled out long before they were born, and more than a few of them get off on that execrable 19th century German economic rat.  Hearing such a pandering quote from someone who, I think it’s fair to say, supports the protests, was a bit surprising.  Then again, it does indicate that same intellectual haughtiness, the blithe certainty that the little people don’t read and must be given their ideas.  Why someone like Berrett, hell-bent as he is on assigning academic ownership of OWS, quotes this befuddled librarian, who seems shocked that average people still like books, is the real oddity.

One can’t conceive of unwashed souls, souls without tenure, kickstarting something.  The other marvels to see them seek out ideas.  I say OWS could stand to clarify whatever ideas it has a bit more.

Such a disconnect does still encapsulate something I’ve noticed in the rapidly growing body of commentary on OWS.  Observers praise the natural, grassroots flavor, the welcoming and participation by all comers, the lack of an obvious leader.  And, with the next breath, they trot out the old argument about central planning being so bloody crucial.

If anything, it seems that OWS’ problem is that the people camping out don’t really have a fully developed message, but that plenty of self-congratulatory men with unhealthy power lust have fully crystallized ideas about what to do with the great huddled masses.

And he illustrated it with a Venn Diagram.  Which I kind of loved.  (Venns are basically infographics for people who understand basic statistics but not graphic design.)

Could both sides have a valid point?  Capitalism is groovy.  Corrupt business practices, rent seeking, protectionism, and deliberately distorting the market to block competition are not capitalistic.  Just because men in business suits are doing it doesn’t make it true capitalism or good business.  Hell, it’s possible for registered Republicans to be bad people.

We all seize on quotes when an avowed lefty admits the government may have gone too far as proof that we really were right.  Is it maybe time to admit that an obsessive and all-encompassing defense of large corporations isn’t so smart a strategy?  I don’t see a problem in reconciling this with being an aggressively free-market type.  Governments protecting existing businesses isn’t capitalism, and I think it’s a little disingenuous to pretend that isn’t going on.

As Sinclair points out, the real threat to entrenched whores-in-power-suspenders* would arrive if these two groups considered what they have in common.  Of course, this means OWS needs to lose the romantic Marxist baloney and the Tea Party needs to spend some time apart from those beloved hardcore social values.  But hell, if those two annoyances were removed from political discourse, it would be a big improvement all by itself.

Eileen McGuire-Mahony still reminds you to spellcheck your protest signs, factcheck your soundbites, and make time for a shower with hot water at least once every 24 hours.  Hygiene isn’t bourgeois; it’s polite.  The world is a screwed up place and there will still be plenty to howl about when you rejoin the group.

* Actually, I somewhat like the look of suspenders, very ‘soaring-blue-chip-index’ without all the nasty S&L crisis associations.  Still, have cliche…will travel.

We aren’t even going to pretend the source was the “Ohmigod, would you just look at the size of this request” story was anything other than Brandon Shaffer.  So what.  Someone delivers an open records request basically designed to drown you and you make sure the press knows.  So far, par for the course.

However, we also know, thank to Tim Hoover’s article about said CORA, that GOP party-pet attorney Mario Nicolais filed the request through the Hackstaff Law Group on behalf of the thoroughly unbranded TheStateofColorado.net…so it’s basically an anonymous request.  There is noting wrong with making open record request anonymously, and we know well the benefit of keeping your name from vindictive government types, what with their curious allergy to sunshine.  However, obviously, Shaffer wants to know who really filed the request, hence his eagerness to crowd source the grunt work on that.

What can we say, we bit.  And we have the answer.  That poorly designed placeholding home page, redolent of early versions of ColoradoSenateNews?  The throw-everything-at-’em-and-hope-something-sticks desperation of a request so massive it draws attention before the results have been delivered, let alone parsed?  Hiding behind a website, behind a lawyer, behind a lawfirm?

C’mon, Brandon.  Who else has such appalling new media chops?  Who else could be unable to conceive a more original or subtle way to be the thorn in your side?  You might consider the legal bill the requester is going to have, the sheer cost of the material they’ve requested, the fact that the requester’s name has not yet been accidentally-on-purpose leaked…

In other words, one way or another, this is ultimately the work of the state GOP.  Don’t worry Brandon.  We’ve been watching Colorado’s establishment conservative set since 2004.  So long as they’re your biggest enemy, you’re golden.

Unless, Brandon, this is some sort of ploy from your side.  Heaven help you boys if your stunts are now dumb enough to be confused with the Republican party.

Electoral politics, by its nature, basically ensures the worst characters will win.  In the time it takes one candidate to balk at some amoral tactic, a dozen others will have rushed ahead.  It is a cynical and axiomatic truth that those who survive politics at the very top levels are not at all the best men.  Governed as we are by ethically dubious egomaniacs, we owe it to posterity to record the character and disposition of the jackals we’ve been foolish enough to elect.

Obviously, this makes us look bad.  It makes the politicians look worse.

Lèse Majesté, the French term for ‘injured majesty’, refers to laws criminalizing anything deemed offensive or derogatory to the dignity of a sovereign.   We have no such nonsense in America.  For one thing, the majority of the Congress would soon be hanged for violating lèse majesté against itself.  Though, come to think of it, wouldn’t that be nice?

A relic of hereditary power, lèse majesté is usually found in the remaining pockets of monarchy.  In some places, people can actually earn prison sentences for nasty remarks, including those made privately.  It’s been used against foreign nationals who made unflattering comments while in a country with lèse majesté, including a Coloradan who “defamed” the King of Thailand.

In practice, those states that have such statutes often expand their use of lèse majesté to go after people who malign the sovereign’s main squeeze, rugrats, and assorted grasping relatives.  For instance, a man was fined several hundred Euros for saying rude things about Beatrix, coronated git of The Netherlands, and describing some rather intimate things he’d like to do to the old dame.  I pulled up her picture.  Quite frankly, in passing judgment, I’d prescribe therapy or, perhaps, corrective eyewear.  Even better, I’d recommend that the delicate little snowflakes at the royal court grow a pair.

The proper response to an insult is, if it was witty and well-aimed, appreciative laughter, and, if it was gauche and unimaginative, cold silence.  Decent people have better things to do than bring the power of the state to bear on irreverent words.

Refining the dialogue and punishing the most ill-bred cretins among us is the work of culture; it is not a fit task for the government.  While we must, so as to preserve civil rights and private life, abide a certain level of vulgarity in the arena, we are under no obligation to stand for such behavior privately.  In fact, it is precisely because we allow such freedoms in public life that we may maintain our own standards in our own personal spheres.

It is one thing to allow some behavior legally and another altogether to smile upon it in polite society.  Trying to legislate manners is as stupid and dangerous as trying to lower the murder rate via cotillion lessons.

The state that proposes to regulate barbed speech wherever it is found is, make no mistake, proposing to regulate private life.

When a state does not quite outlaw the act of tittering at the political class but goes about obsessively collecting information on sharp-tongued critics, it’s a dire sign.  In the era of the Absolute Monarchs, this sort of spying was, I imagine, down by mustachioed cads who went bopping about in run-down neighborhoods, probably wearing long capes and velvet masks.  These days, such stuff is relegated to a number of Foggy Bottom cosplay groups while the work of collating data on dissenters gets done via the Web; that, of course, is infinitely more frightening.

Modern technology has allowed levels of surveillance and intrusion once unimaginable.  Even thoughtful people, with keen grasps of policy and ethics, admit that theory lags far behind technology here.  Hypothetically putting such marvelous machines and gizmos in the hands of Potomac troglodytes who never think and have no morals is a formula for crisis.  Worse, we won’t be able to say rude things about the inevitable screw-ups.

A state that chases down each insult and every aspersion is necessarily an exspansive  police state, a society that recognizes no free speech and respects no privacy.  The paranoia and malice of such a government infects the citizens, making them reproachful against one another, turning them into unpaid spies who work by a sort of ‘Denounce your neighbor lest he denounce you first’ logic.

Ironically, by the time any state could be well along the path to such dystopia, it would too late to do much fighting back.  The increase of government surveillance strikes at the root of the ability to effectively resist the overreach of the state.  It is for this reason  that I have some sympathy for immediate and pronounced reactions when some facet of the government announces plans for one or another asinine program.  Just think, if we’d all flown into timely, apoplectic rage back in January 2010 when Homeland Security began rolling out backscatter x-rays, it might still be possible to fly with dignity.

Alright, fine, there’s my theory and pontificating.  How does this apply?  Do I think the United States is on the brink of upending the First Amendment and assigning the political elite to a special realm where no one may dare criticize them?  No.  For one thing, American free speech protections and American slander and libel laws give wide latitude to speech that might be upsetting and unkind.  Especially compared to some states, we have a way to go before even getting close to criminalizing insults.

But, I stand by the idea that the strongest way to fight off attacks on civil liberties is to push back immediately, not to belittle the threat.  Happily, if applied soon enough, a few belittling insults can work wonders in cutting down the sort of pompous twerps who might like to shroud themselves in some sort of artificially polite aura.  In free speech matters, one must remember that the First Amendment protects the rights of those advocating to restrict free speech, paradoxically putting legitimate champions of unrestricted speech at something of a disadvantage.  So, say I, mock early and mock often.