NAFTA, revisionist birther history, a deadly guru, an alleged mind control video, Gore vs. Obama...

This video putatively exposes a pentagon scheme to control the brains of "terrorists." The obvious unspoken suggestion, of course, is that Uncle Sam could put the whammy on anyone else as well. Arguably, large pockets of the American south could benefit from this tech.

That said, there are those who insist that this video is simply an elaborate hoax. Also see here. Come to your own conclusions; at the moment, I don't have the time to get into the nitty and the gritty of this debate...

NAFTA: Remember when Barack Obama said that he would renegotiate or end NAFTA? When he took the oath of office, our annual trade deficit with Mexico was $39 billion. A year later, it was up to $66 billion. Feel free to check my math, but isn't that a 70% increase?

Of course, our trade deficit with China is up to $60 billion or so -- for the first quarter of this year.

Birthers. Slate offers a good history of Birth Certificate "controversy" -- a.k.a., the stupidest conspiracy theory ever (except for the "no planes" theory of 9/11). But I took some umbrage at this...

The early birthers were conservatives and Clinton supporters, people with intense interest in denying the presidency to Obama by any means necessary. The Hillary supporters did some of the hardest digging. It was one of them, going by the name TexDarlin, who took up a challenge to find a contemporary birth announcement for Obama in 1961 Honolulu newspapers. In late July 2008, she found two of them.

First: The real PUMA contingent never fell for that birther crap; it was pushed by people like Larry Johnson and Pam Geller. Although the Slate piece discusses the great TechDude hoax, it neglects to mention my own not-inconsiderable part in exposing it.

Most importantly: The execrable TexasDarlin did not find the Obama birth announcements. That job was done by the late Lorenda Starfelt, a film-maker and good friend to this blog. I doubt that TexasDarlin could find Texas on a map of Texas with the word "TEXAS" printed in 40 pt. letters.

Slate writer David Weigel took his facts from FactCheck.org, which -- uncharacteristically -- got it wrong.

James Arthur Ray -- or, as I call him, "Death" Ray -- has been found guilty of homicide in those sweat lodge deaths. Remember the story? Greed propelled the guru to fill the thing up with way more human beings than would ever normally take part in such a ceremony. Fifty-six people paid ten thou apiece.

Penny for your stocks: Is this the latest incarnation of Jonathan Lebed, or is it the work of an admirer? If you go to the website, you'll see no easy way to discover the names and histories of the financial geniuses behind this scheme. They hide their identities yet they ask you to take their financial advice. That's awfully damned suspicious, if you asks me.

Not too long ago, I thought that "pump and dump" was simply a summary of my stepfather's dating advice.

Al Gore versus Barack Obama. I don't know about you, but I like the sound of that. Salon tells us to drop the G-v-O script, but I prefer to savor the notion.

Gore's Rolling Stone piece is here. His subject is the well-funded climate-change denial movement,which was the subject of a Cannonfire video called "The Science Con." Unfortunately, Gore doesn't directly talk about the Heartland Institute, the Randroid pseudo-"think tank" that is behind much of the effort to convince the public that the facts ain't facts.

Gore makes important points that go far beyond the climate change debate...

In the new ecology of political discourse, special-interest contributors of the large sums of money now required for the privilege of addressing voters on a wholesale basis are not squeamish about asking for the quo they expect in return for their quid. Politicians who don't acquiesce don't get the money they need to be elected and re-elected. And the impact is doubled when special interests make clear — usually bluntly — that the money they are withholding will go instead to opponents who are more than happy to pledge the desired quo. Politicians have been racing to the bottom for some time, and are presently tunneling to new depths. It is now commonplace for congressmen and senators first elected decades ago — as I was — to comment in private that the whole process has become unbelievably crass, degrading and horribly destructive to the core values of American democracy.

Largely as a result, the concerns of the wealthiest individuals and corporations routinely trump the concerns of average Americans and small businesses. There are a ridiculously large number of examples: eliminating the inheritance tax paid by the wealthiest one percent of families is considered a much higher priority than addressing the suffering of the millions of long-term unemployed; Wall Street's interest in legalizing gambling in trillions of dollars of "derivatives" was considered way more important than protecting the integrity of the financial system and the interests of middle-income home buyers. It's a long list.

In the same way, because the banks had their way with Congress when it came to gambling on unregulated derivatives and recklessly endangering credit markets with subprime mortgages, we still have almost double-digit unemployment, historic deficits, Greece and possibly other European countries teetering on the edge of default, and the threat of a double-dip recession. Even the potential default of the United States of America is now being treated by many politicians and too many in the media as yet another phony wrestling match, a political game. Are the potential economic consequences of a U.S. default "real"? Of course they are! Have we gone completely nuts?

We haven't gone nuts — but the "conversation of democracy" has become so deeply dysfunctional that our ability to make intelligent collective decisions has been seriously impaired.

ADDED NOTE: This is the most awesomely awesome thing I've seen in ages.