Cal Damage

Emtala !

2011-02-15T18:15:00.000-08:00

There are only two arguments about the health insurance package of regulations, HCRA, that passed last year.

Financially, either this law is intended to reduce the expense on each person, on average, of the fastest inflating cost sector of our economy, or it is an attempt to bankrupt the nation by "nationalizing health care."

Legally, this is either a standard regulation issued by Congress under the 'Commerce Clause' of the Constitution, or the imposition of dictatorial power over the citizens of this great nation, and over the great states that should have the right to nullify this law.

I'd like to look at it a little differently.

I'd like to say a magic word, an incantation over this argument, to see if I can change it into something else.

Here's my magic word.

Emtala!

I see two parts to the actual problem of medical care in this country, the actual problem being it costs too damned much to get medical care in this country.

These parts are mirrors of each other: no one wants to be required to pay for it, but everyone is already required to pay for it.

Hunh?

First, as a nation, we're doing exactly nothing to bring down costs. No wonder so many people not only do without insurance, they do without care. "I'll ignore it. It'll go away."

But the other is that, as a nation, we're required to provide, and pay for, emergency care for anyone who walks into any emergency room and asks for it. Even if the emergency room determines the person doesn't need service, it's required to have a medical professional make that determination. And it costs money to know when to say 'No.'

Emtala!

I kept wondering, is it true that the law that now says that in 2014, if you don't have medical insurance, you could be fined, is constitutionally void? Not because it manages commerce but because it forces commerce onto everyone, requiring them to buy something from an insurance company?

Because if that's the case, then something else is unconstitutional.

Something that even that great constitutionalist, George W Bush, has held up as a shining beacon of our health care system.

Because it, too, requires each of us to buy something from a private company, usually a hospital corporation, but often a doctors group, an emergency transportation service, or some other provider involved in emergency care.

And it is...Emtala!

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, included in the Comprehensive Omnibus Budget Reconcilaition Act of 1986. The EMTALA of COBRA, if you will.

It codified and federalized the requirement to provide, to anyone who comes to an emergency room, (or maybe just within 250 yards of it,) all medical care needed to stabilize the person's condition, whether needing emergency care or in active labor. All this without regard to ability to pay. In fact, the prices of the services may not be discussed, due to the impact they may have on the person's willingness to receive service.

While all other civilized nations debated the moral obligation of universal health care, and decided in favor of it, our recent arguments have been exclusively about costs, and who should bear them.

Perhaps it is because we had our discussion on moral obligation back in 1986, when we decided, as George W Bush pointed out, that everyone has coverage. We as a nation required ourselves to pay for the emergency rooms provided by public or private hospitals and clinics across the country. Without asking what that cost might be.

Oh, the providers may try to bill the actual patients after the fact. Impose a financial debt on the newborn, or send the dying off with one last sheaf of bills. They may even make a good case for bankrupting a family whose child was in need. But ultimately, we are the guarantors of those debts. Each and every one of us has been forced into a financial transaction with a commercial institution, with our consent, because EMTALA was passed by our federal representatives, just as the HCRA was.

Maybe we should have linked HCRA to EMTALA explicitly. Because if one is unconstitutional, they both are. If one goes down, the other does, too.

Then, anyone who doesn't want to buy health insurance would be assured of not being a burden at the emergency room, since emergency treatment, like all medical treatment, would be based on ability to pay. Show your insurance card or go die in the parking lot.

And, since the emergency room could post its prices, any mother, as a sharp-eyed American consumer, could shop her son's broken arm or her daughter's bursting appendix around to the most cost-effective emergency room.

After all, isn't the best way to bring down costs to make everyone pay their bill?

If you're cutting back, and I'm cutting back, and they're...

2010-11-14T23:13:00.000-08:00

(10:34:30 PM)
Everybody's got an opinion on the federal budget. I've enjoyed Kevin Drum's analysis at Mother Jones, and the NYTimes has a sweet little roll-yer-own budget fix toy at their site. And the Republican's have the Tax Hike they wrote ten years ago and scheduled as a surprise for this New Year's Eve. Obama and the rest of the G-20 are talking spending cuts to solve the economic disaster brought to us courtesy of Phil and Cindy Gramm, Mozillo's Countrywide, and the folks that rolled and sold the mortgage securities we all got high on, before we crashed.

Here's what I know about the economy:
I'm in a high tech position in a low tech field, in the 6th year of a three-month contract at a privately-held company. I can be let go any day. My wife, on the other hand, has a secure position as a researcher (read "profit-center") at UCLA. As secure as a state employee's job can be in California these days, anyway.
Those things in mind, we are paying off the three credit cards and the second mortgage as fast as we can. We are not buying new cars any time soon. Mine's ten years old, her's is fifteen, but they'll last another five years, until we can buy used in the electric-car or hybrid markets.
We used to go out at least once a week. That ended a year ago, partly due to schedules, partly because of the economy.
We're putting everything we can into not being vulnerable to the banks or the unemployment line.

We ain't helping the economy.

Neither are the corporations that are sitting on, what's the latest sum, one trillion, two trillion in cash? They're flush, but they're afraid to invest in America, because they don't see where it's going. Obama keeps driving along the edge of the ditch, never quite pulling us back onto the road to the future, but never letting the Republicans steer us further off the road into the ditch. The Republicans, now with one-and-a-half houses of Congress, want to extend tax cuts and cut spending on oversight and regulation. Insanity isn't the only thing that is "doing the same thing, expecting different results." The death of America is caused that way, too.

And the wealthy sure as hell aren't spending. Not here. They're getting their exit plans in order. Mister Prince, former owner of Blackwater, now resides in Dubai, which has no taxes and no extradition treaty with us. Offshore accounts, in the Bahamas and on the Isle of Man for example, are doing more business than ever. Wealthy Americans now just consider themselves wealthy. They have enough to live anywhere, and to buy off anyone, to avoid taxes or "penalties."

You and I aren't spending anything we don't have to. Neither are corporations. Neither are the top half of 1%, who have taken their 25% or America's wealth, and taken it off the table. States are almost all in the red, and are bound by their own constitutions and laws to balance their budgets.

So demand is collapsing across the board, as every person, every company, every agency pulls back, holds onto what they have, only reluctantly spends anything, and only when it's absolutely necessary.

That leaves only one possible current source of demand, for goods and services, and research and investment. Only one source of income for the 15 million unwemployed, the 60 million uninsured, the tens of millions of aged and infirm on Social Security.

So the best way, the only way, to grow the American economy, to put Americans back to work, to get American corporations back in the game, not just at home, but in the world's markets, is for the Federal government to...cut back on spending, fire federal workers, reduce other workers income, and eliminate suppprts to the unemployed, the uninsured and the aged.

Because that's Investing in America's Future.

Assuming she has one.
(11:02:10 PM)

Same GOP: '06, '08, '10: Never Give Up, Never Give Up , Never Give Up

2010-11-11T23:35:00.000-08:00

(11:05:05 PM)
This one's to catch up on a note that's been burning a hole in my pocket.

Last Saturday morning, while I was running, I heard this interview on NPR's weekend edition. (transcript)
I hope you'll take the five minutes to listen to it. This is the enemy.

This is Mike Fitzpatrick, who just won back the PA-08 House seat he lost to a Democrat in '08. He is not a caricature, like Michele Bachmann or Christine O'Donnell, nor a sharp operator like Haley Barbour, or John Boehner. Fitzpatrick is the drone of the zombie horde, the enemy of the future of America, the walking dead idea. Listen to him. A calm, reasonable voice. Not trying to sell or convince, simply stating his long disproved, and recently re-disproved, Republican mantra: more tax cuts, fewer returns on our social investments, we must make cuts in entitlements, lower taxes to create jobs. You are getting sleepy, you will stay home, you will not vote against us, because we walk the land and feed on brains...brains...brains of FOX viewers....

He's not stupid, he just has no ability to question the hive mind overlord, Murdoch or the CofC, whatever those things out there are being controlled by, but if it takes putting down NPR to keep them from infecting the rest of us, so be it....

Two final points, mildly related to this post.

1) I finally got around to re-upping my subscription to my all-talk NPR station. I re-joined for $10 a month, every month, until I tell them to stop. I had also done this for the Californuia Democratic party's DEM2010 program, starting back at the beginning of the year. That seems to have worked out. (C'mon, Kamala!) With Republicans threatening to take away the maybe 3% of the funding NPR gets through federal grants, I want to help make up the difference.

2) A joke I heard before Halloween: The Zombie Rallying Cry: "What Do We Want?" BRAINS! "When Do We Want Them?"...BRAINS!
(Well, FOX and its viewers do stay on message. Perhaps this explains why.)
(11:22:43 PM)

Nimrata Randhawa Haley vs. Barack Hussein Obama

2010-11-04T09:36:00.000-07:00

Now that the elections are over, I have two major writing projects ahead of me. First, I have (been) volunteered for the management of the neighborhood council's newsletter, which is due to have all copy and pics ready this weekend, delivered to the layout person for preliminary set-up. This is my first time out doing it this way, but this isn't a political newsletter, like I did monthly for a few years for my democratic Club.
This one has a circulation of several thousand, delivered, and is printed professionally. I'll be editing and corralling, but hardly write an original line.

Original writing will be left (mostly) to a second year of effort at NaNoWriMo.org, writing a novel of 50,000 words in 30days. >Whew!< Yes, but I did it last lear, and fortunately, this year, Election Day was as early as consitutionally possible, "first Tuesday after the first Monday" and all that.

I will not be boring you with the contents of that novel.But it means that what I post at the blog will usually be short, without much elaboration, but hopefully worth reading.

That said, let me beat on TeaBaggers one more time. Not the 'last time,' just 'one more time.'

Many one-liners stood out in last night's victory, and hard-reality, speeches. Harry Reid's 'that bell is just the sound of the start of the next round' was a winner. Rick Santorum admitting that the reason the 'Contract On America' didn't succeed in 1994 is because 'we didn't have FOX to carry the message.' I couldn't watch the victory speech of whatever clod Feingold lost to in Wisconsin, because I can't afford a new TV right now, and I'd have put my foot through the jerk's picture, mid-sentence.

But the one that struck me was Nikki Haley's speech. You know, Nimrata Randhawa Haley, the new TeaBagger-elect of the state of South Care-a-Lotta Nuthin for Ethics, home of Gov. Sandford of the Appalachian/Argentinean Trail, and Sen. Jim DeMentalCase, and Rep. Joe 'You Lie!' Wilson.

"Eighteen months ago, I saw a state and a federal government losing control. Arrogant in its spending, arrogant in its responsibilities, and a need to step in and say we need to take our state and our country back."

Eighteen months ago, Barack Hussein Obama had been in office less than 100 days. He had not proposed a budget. He had not passed Health Insurance Reform (HIR.) he had not added a nickel to the national debt, and was barely started on a budget that ended up with less deficit spending than the last one the Republicans had passed for their fearless leader, Junior Bush. Obama was still trying to get out from under the steaming turd of an economy that Junior and The Dick had dropped in his lap as they hot-footed it out of DC.

Eighteen months ago, the only thing that had changed was that Bush TARP'd the banks, and Obama took office.

No, eighteen months ago, the real thing that happened as far as any South Carolina Republican was concerned is, omigawd, they's a darkie in the White House.

I suppose it should be nice to see a person of color (Nikki) hate another person of color, on actions and policies. Except that couldn't be what this was about, 'cause Obama hadn't been in office long enough to act much, or have any policies other than the ones he ran on for over two years before the election.

No, the only thing that changed was, thay's a darkie in the White House.

And it's an ugly thing to see self-haters in government. All the gay Republicans who hate gays (David Dreir, I'm talking to you), women who hate women (pick any Teabagger candidate, from Sarah Palin to Michelle Bachman to Carly Fiorina to Virginia Lamp Thomas), and all the people of color who hate people of color because they think that's how to get ahead (Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas, and now, Nikki Haley. It's a short list. Republicans hate people of color)

The corporatists like the Bradleys and the Kochs and Forbes all saw this racist wave come out of the closet the day Obama was sworn in, and they put a shitload of money (that's more than $10 million and less than $1 billion, which, of course, is a fuckload) into getting racists to run against their own interests but in the corporational interests.

And down the toilet we go. Enjoy the ride, because it's dark down in the sewer of racist, corporate shit streams, and it'll be a few years, and at least one more Republican president, before we really solve these problems. And I'm not sure America has that kind of time left.

Like I said, dark.

How I Love America (And Why I Sent Money To Al Franken)

2010-11-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

I know Al Franken's book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," is old news by now, and the paperback promised to include the transcript of proceedings of FOX's suit against him over the title. But I'd like to add a note about the book that no one else seems to have noted. In academia, you earn a doctorate, a PhD, by adding a new idea to your chosen field. In that case, among the devastating analysis, satire, and flat-out great jokes, Al earned a PhD in Poli Sci for the following opening to his fifth chapter:

    If you listen to a lot of conservatives, they'll tell you that the difference between them and us is that conservatives love America and liberals hate America. That we "blame America first." That we're suspicious of patriotism and always think our country's in the wrong. As conservative radio and TV personality Sean Hannity says, we liberals "train our children to criticize America, not celebrate it."

    They don't get it. We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America the way a four-year-old loves her mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a four-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful, and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world.

    That's why we liberals want America to do the right thing. We know America is the hope of the world, and we love it and want it to do well. We also want it to do good.

    When liberals look back on history, we see things we're very proud of. And we also see some things, which might have seemed like good ideas at the time, but turned out to be mistakes. And some things we did, well, they were just bad. That doesn't keep us from loving our country --- it's part of loving our country. It's called honesty. What do you think is more important to a loving relationship: honesty or lies?

beginning of Chapter Five, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by Al Franken

I use this to comfort me, that I am dealing mostly with the immature when I meet Republicans, led though they are by some genuinely mean, bitter people....

PS: A simple comparison of signs from Glenn Beck's 8/28 rally and those at the Rally To Restore Sanity on 10/30/10 demonstrate a lot of this.

Why Republicans Won't Win On Tuesday

2010-10-31T18:05:00.000-07:00

The generals are always fighting the last war, as the saying goes, and the pollsters are polling the 2008 electorate.
There are two problems with this, one demographic, and one technological.

Demographically, there are a significant number of younger voters this cycle, ones who registered for the first time in 2008. Many of them may have moved, many of them may have not participated in the run-up to this election (more about this in part two) but they were sensitized to politics through both the party primary contests of 2007&2008, and then the actual election that brought Obama to the White House with over three times the vote margin that Junior Bush had across both his (s)elections.
The vast majority of this cohort were Obama voters. They're still Obama "monitors." And most of them are still registered.

Second, 2008 was the first presidential election since the cell phone became widely used as the primary or only phone for a large number (majority?) of Americans, and moreso among voters. Even though a huge number of voter registrations were processed nationwide, only the new ones got changes in phone numbers to cell phone numbers, if they put the number down at all. Remember, phone number is not required on registrations in most states, just encouraged. And people who still have home land-lines as well as cell phones usually put down the land-line as their phone number on legal docs.

What this means is that this election cycle is the first cycle where the landline population is ignoring their home phones because all their friends, family and co-workers have their cell numbers, which aren't on the voter reg.
Meanwhile, cell-only phone owners, even if they gave their numbers on their registration, usually ignore numbers they don't recognize or that their phone's phone book doesn't match to a name.
And while robo-calls are out there, and phone banks are burning up the air, the calls are falling on deaf ears, because the robo-calls leave messages that are dumped, and the phone bankers, generally, leave no message at all, but just hang up after four rings, mark 'NoAnswer' on the call sheet and go to the next number.

Polling companies will claim they are taking this into account, but they can't, by definition. They may include a statistically significant number of the younger age bracket, but the quality of these will not match that of the politically aware, if not campaign-engaged, that are registered. Their polls will use younger voters who are hoping for a call, from anyone. Ones who can't or don't hide behind caller-id. Which, you and I know, is not even the average youth, much less the young Obama voter.

But on Tuesday, the energizer gap will have closed significantly by the close of the polls. Because these 2008 voters, living their lives behind caller-id and voicemail, will show up in sufficient numbers to seriously screw with the pollsters' numbers.

And John Boner will still be the limp dick he's always been.
(5:58:41 PM)(6:04:49 PM)

Birthers, Up Close and Personal

2010-10-28T01:33:00.000-07:00

[Got this in my In-Box late this afternoon]

To the 2008 California Electors:

You will recall that Alan Keyes and others brought a “Birther” lawsuit in November 2008, seeking to block the casting of your Electoral College votes. We have had the privilege of representing you, President Obama, and Vice-President Biden in that litigation. As we advised you last year, the case was dismissed by the Sacramento Superior Court on the grounds that the state court did not have jurisdiction over the qualifications of presidential candidates, which the Constitution commends to the Congress, and that the case was moot — plaintiffs failed to even attempt to obtain any order before you had completed voting and President Obama had been inaugurated.

Keyes and his cohorts appealed that judgment, and this week the Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, affirmed the dismissal. A copy of the court’s opinion, which will be published in the official reports, is attached. As you will see, the opinion affirms the decision below on all grounds.

Keyes can attempt to get review of the decision by the California Supreme Court and, failing that, by the U.S. Supreme Court, but neither court is obliged to hear the case and it is unlikely either one would. So we expect that this decision will be the final word on the matter as far as California state courts are concerned.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

[Happy to send any readers copies of the attachment on request]

America is the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs. "Let's Downsize It!"

2010-10-27T17:01:00.000-07:00

(4:31:00 PM)

Businessmen are lousy in government for a lot of reasons, as I showed yesterday.
But wait. There's more reasons.

Ever met a business man who didn't want to grow his business? Not a successful one, no. He or she wants to do better than the other sales operations, get the better product to market faster, to be able to be bigger than any other people in the same business, maybe in the same area.

Businessmen are built to grow their kingdoms. It's how they know they're important. More important than the other businessman. Reagan grew government bigger by huge amounts. Hell, the largest civilian office building in government is the Ronald Reagan Building in DC.

Please square this with "I want to make it smaller" that they all claim during their campaigns for public office. It's crap when they say it, and they know it's crap. They want more territory, more people who need their OK to inhale or exhale, and, good Republican business people that they are, they will do ANYTHING to be on top. This includes rewriting the Constitution, handing out lobbyist checks on the floor of the House, handcuffing or stomping opponents and their supporters. This includes going in the hole 4 trillion dollars to buy a second term (Bush Junior's tax cuts) or starting two wars to prove you're more important than your dad (same bozo.)

And they rarely want to learn the ropes. Because being good at business means you're good at everything. It's that ego that knows everything that keeps them from being willing to listen to anyone that's also elected to government. It's especially what makes them lousy legislators: no idea what working on a team is like. Just want to be 'Leader.'

Finally, businessmen seem to think that they are the golden goose that we should all respect and idolize, because they make the gold. But they've got it backwards. They're a dime a dozen, mostly.

But there's only one America. And it's the goose that lays the golden eggs. Whether the gold is long-term investments like sewer systems and clean air standards, or a standardized market for business to grow in, or the businesses it encourages.

America is the golden goose. And businessmen thinking they know how to run it are just like the butcher who cut open the goose in the story, to get all the golden eggs now. Dumb butcher. Dumb businessmen.
(4:58:28 PM)

Being a business owner or corporate CEO is exactly the WRONG preparation for Government.

2010-10-26T18:49:00.001-07:00

(6:15:06 PM)
What the hell makes businessmen, and this cycle, businesswomen, think that running a business is any qualification for working in government? And notice I said 'working in'. The idea that no 'ONE' is running the government seems to escape a good many people these days. Even progressives who think Obama was elected Good Witch of the North, complete with magic wand. But especially business people and (usually) the Republicans who are buying that 'run government like a business' load.

Look, it's called a democracy, a republican democracy, for a reason. We all get to vote. We all get to choose who represents us in doing the various functions of government that we find necessary but, usually, realize we have either no time to do, or don't know much about. Or both. Example: what do you know about shale field frakking? Yea, yea, you just got to get the baby's bottle made, what do you care about shale field frakking...Aren't you glad someone is trying to prevent it from releasing crude oil by-products into the water-tables of northeastern North America...oh, yea, you're in California. Who cares about eastern North America?

But here in California, two business women are trying to approach government like a business. First, by buying a major interest in the company, err, in government. And much to their surprise, there's more to it than putting money on the table. The buyer has to actually like you, like what else you bring to the table. And being good at business, which neither of them really were, ain't much of a qualification anyway.

See, you can't just fire the ones who disagree with you. I'm talking to you, Meg. The others get their positions the same way you're trying to. We voted for them. And if they disagree with you, well, tough. This was the great frustration of the Republicans in the nineties. They wanted to fire Clinton, and but they actually needed a cause. Electeds can't just fire other electeds in government because they don't like them. Especially when they've been, oh yes, elected.

Also, government's not there just for a financial profit. Certainly not your own. Truman said you could tell an honest politician by whether he was poorer when he left than he was when he entered the office. You especially don't get to arrange for $40Million golden parachutes. Ya hear that, Carly, ya tone-deaf dirty Q-tip? Did listening to all those HP board members you wiretapped make you tone-deaf?

In fact, government's not in it for the next quarter's returns. So you're in it for the long haul, over a horizon that's way past the end of your term in office. Kennedy spoke of reaching the moon by 'the end of the decade.' Jerry Brown looked thirty years down the road from his tenure in office. Guess what? We're there.

And a big piece of why we can see the horizon at all is because California politicians, especially Brown, saw clean air and clean water as important, and energy efficiencies and pollution reduction as the way to get there. So instead of the smog, and effluent, and multiple nuclear and coal-fire plants business people told us we had to have, Californians use less energy, and less manufacturing materials, than they did thirty years ago. And we can see the mountains from the coast, even with more than twice the cars that were here then. All with the same living standards as the rest of Americans.

Who are suffering, along with us, from the national disaster of letting people run the country like a business, people who claimed to be qualified because they had "run a business, and made payroll."

Frankly, compared to working in government, especially a democratic republic, that ain't shit.

More later, including 'comparing sociopaths.'
(6:37:29 PM) (6:46:51 PM)

Random Monday: ToDos: Multitasking Sucks

2010-10-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

Rounding the corner into the fourth quarter of 2010. Jesus, where does it go? Looking ,at what happened this year around the house and around the life, it takes my breath away. Yet the ToDo list seems as long as, if not longer than, ever. After a few of the things this year, like Mom getting better but Dad dying, and Magnolia expected to graduate at year-end, a lot of the ToDos have attained (or been assigned) entirely different positions on the list.

It's weird. There's a resignation over some things, and a renewed determination about others. The resignation comes somewhat from realizing that there's not as much time left as there was when I was twenty (no duh!), but also from the fact that I know those things were never as important as they were interesting, and important is the only game in town from here on out.

'Important' brings with it determination and, hopefully, focus. Daily, I find examples of getting things done, and often done well, just by doing them to the exclusion of everything else. I have remarked earlier but want to reiterate: Multi-tasking is crap. Sure, you get three things done in the time it should have taken to do...three things. But by intermingling them, none are done as well as any would have been, had it been done to the exlclusion of the others.

Sure, sometimes, it's not possible to deal with the screaming kid and the boiling pan separately. And anger at not being able to separate them is a hallmark of the mind of the self-important. When the world deals you cards and throws you a ball at the same time, well, just be glad you've got two hands.

But why plan to do several things at once? That's just stupid.

I have a hand-scrawled Post-It on the fridge at home, reminding me of this.
"Doing too many things, and None of them Well" is how it reads, punctuation, capitalization and all.

At least Dawn is out-growing her Post-It, "Hell Is Other People", a pensee from JPSartre.

"Dinner At Eight, With San Pellegrino" (...sing it with me...)

2010-10-16T19:25:00.000-07:00

If you remember the tune for these TV ads for the sparkling water, you'll understand. If you don't, well...here's a link to the jingle. (just press the > play button in the middle). Don't listen to the whole ad, just catch the 4 couplets of the jingle, to get the idea...then sing along:

Purveyor of hate
it's Carl Paladino.

Nothing but straight
for Carl Paladino

The natural state
of Carl Paladino

Is loud and irate
That's Carl Paladino

He cheats on his mate
That's Carl Paladino

She found out too late
About Carl Paladino

Run New York State?
Not Carl Paladino.

Don't take the bait.
Vote for Andrew Cuomo.

Not the best, but it'd be a fun radio spot. Stick the tune in the heads of the voters of New Yahk.

TeaBagger or American: Pick One.

2010-10-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

In December of 2008, just before the Electoral College vote to confirm Obama as the next president, I received a package from WorldNetDaily.com. It was a list of 4,000 names, each of which had paid a princely sum ($19.95?) to sign the petition that warned Electors to do their Constitutional duty and vote against Obama, since he'd never shown his birth certificate, and wasn't born in America, and yadda yadda yadda.....I still have it somewhere, if you want to see it.

The Fedex guy who delivered it recognized the sender, and knew my politics. "What'd they send ya?" So I told him, and I showed him. "What are you gonna do with it?" he asked. And my answer was quick, and clear. "If they'd given a rat's ass about the Constitution at any point during the Bush Administration, I might listen to them," I said. "As it is, fuck 'em." He laughed. We shook hands. He drove off.

In the face of this election, the TeaBaggers, (including those 4,000 signers, I'm sure) have been created out of the whole cloth of hatred for Democrats, but energized by the fact that Democrats actually did what the Constitution said, and elected the person who got the most votes (almost 10Million more than the old guy and the nutbag) and the most Electoral votes, because he was considered more qualified. And who happened to be half-white, instead of all-white.

The Teabaggers are the 18% of America that watch nothing but Fox, listen to nothing but the LimBeck voice of doom, and only read RedState and Freeper-rama. They are the ones that couldn't believe that America would actually elect someone based on their platform and qualifications than on their ability to withstand pain (McCain,) their lack of knowledge (Palin) or their lack of interest (Junior Bush.) At least they were WHITE. (And she's pretty hot in that black leather zipper fetish, and them red six-inch fuck-me pumps. Hoo-aah!)

So when I hear these TeaBaggers screaming about the deficit (90% of which was caused by Bush's tax cuts, two unpaid wars, and deregulation) or about the National Debt (90% of which was generated by the Reagan deficits, and the fiscal stupidity of both Bushs, father and son), and then demanding that "Government better keep its hands off Medicare", (while party Republicans know there's nothing they can cut that won't make voters screammmmmmmmmmm,) well, I just don't have any sympathy.

Because all these problems were created by the Republican 'principles' of tax cuts and deregulation, and all had far worse trend lines when Obama got elected than they do now.

If the Teabaggers had been screaming about this when Georgie suckered them into not one, but two unpaid wars, or when Republicans swindled them into going into debt so that the Bush family's friends could get their taxes cut in half, if any of this 18% had raised a ruckus then, I might listen to them now, when they say 'It's Not Racism' or they whine 'why do you keep blaming Bush?'

But as it is, fuck 'em.

Vote Democratic On November 2nd.

Two Pairs: Pattern Matching The News

2010-10-13T18:08:00.000-07:00

(05:39:46 PM)
A couple of match-game matches came to my attention today.

First, counterpoint the story we've all heard about the Tennessee firefighters who came out to watch a home, and the homeowner's pets, go up in a blaze of libertarianism, first telling the owner he hadn't paid the vig..err..the monthly fee for fire protection, with the other end of the spectrum, a NYCity EMT who's been charged with official misconduct for not coming to the aid of a pregnant asthma victim who collapsed and died in the bakery where the EMT was waiting in line with her boyfriend.

Well, at least the EMT called 911. It's something.

Late addition: aren't those Chilean miners glad they're not in that county in Tennessee? "No, sorry, we can't bring him up. He didn't pay this month's rescue fee." "But I have it right here. Please. I miss my husband." "No, senora, you'll have to take it up with Payroll and HR, and they're both gone for the day."

The other match seemed to exemplify social tipping points, and which side of each drew the attention of the court. In 1958, the Supreme Court decided that Alabama didn't have any right to demand the NAACP's membership list. Hmmm...wonder why? Don't you? Alabama seemed to still be trying to drag the darkies back to the plantation. (Has much changed in the 52 years since? Just askin'.)

Last year, the supporters of California's Prop 8 (sponsored by 'Hate me some of them Gays' Mormons from Utah (?!) sued to keep their membership list secret. Perhaps because they want to be left undisturbed on their plantations, in their gated communities and their stadium-size mega-churches?

They lost.

Isn't it lucky for them that us liberals aren't into actual lynchings, setting on of dogs, or calling out the police? Imagine if the WeHoPD treated Prop 8 supporters the way the Selma PD treated the members of the local NAACP?
(06:00:45 PM) (6:04:49 PM)

Court TV...Or Audio, Anyway..Now On, Every Friday

2010-10-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

(9:47:11 PM)
A couple of Supreme Court cases have caught my attention.

The more important of the two is FCC v AT&T and CompTel, #09-1279, in which AT&T is claiming protection from requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, for records relating to, well, just about anything that happens in the company. AT&T is that part of FOIA "which exempts document disclosures in law enforcement records that would constitute an invasion of “personal privacy” ", according to this article applies to AT&T because AT&T is...wait for it...a person !! The GOP continues to play the long con, and with the Roberts court dealing from the bottom of the cold deck the District court judges have been stacking since they were installed during Republican administrations, I don't have any doubts that AT&T and corporations across the world will win big on this ruling. Instead of the specific law in question, Roberts, Noni, Guido and Unka Thom will pull another Citizens U, addressing issues not in evidence and expanding rights that don't exist.

And they said 'penumbra' was nebulous.

This matters why? Because, as the conservative turnover of government services into private hands advances, this will assure that we, the dumb masses, the former citizens, have no right to find out what happens to the tax dollars, or fees, or whatever we end up paying are called, once they're collected by the private providers. Sure, the city of Bell is a cesspool of official corruption, but citizens found out what was going on, and pulled the threads that led to it unraveling. AT&T can't let that happen to them, and Roberts, et al, will make sure it doesn't.

The reason why you can't run a government like a business, at least not in the United States, is because you can't hang that sign that says "We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone" in the lobby at the DMV. Or at the Social Security office, or at the VA. And the reason a CEO usually makes a lousy elected executive is because they've lost the skill of negotiating, of working with people who aren't beholden to them, who won't ask 'How High?' when told to jump. Much as Arnold would like, he can't fire a state senator, or the attorney general. Meg wouldn't be able to, either.

But if this case gets the fine fondling I expect it will, in the hands of Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas, the debacles behind closed doors at the companies that will be providing your formerly-government services will be unknown to you...forever.

A sly note: why would this be reviewed by the Supremes when it went the company's way at the appellate level in the Third Circuit? If you pull up the PDF on that page (the link's under 'Documents', called 'Petition') you'll notice the 'Solicitor General, Counsel of Record' for the government is Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court's newest Supreme. As a participant in the case, she now has to recuse herself from its appeal. With an 8-justice panel, a tie affirms the Third Circuit's ruling in favor of the corporations. So the fearsome four-some of Scalia's Mighty Mafia won't have to cajole Tony Kennedy into joining in.

I don't know why they'll bother hearing arguments. Thomas won't ask any questions anyway. He never does. "...than to open your mouth and remove all doubt", I guess.

The other case of interest, and I suppose, for entertainment, is the Westboro Church case, Albert Snyder v. Fred Phelps (or 'how to make your family a tax-sheltered operation'), about the right of this family of "Christians" to picket at the burials of US servicemen, like my dad's at Arlington a couple of weeks ago. Their picketing includes signs claiming that 'God Hates Fags' and that our service personnel are dying because America allows homosexuality. Not "allows it in the military" or "allows it is schools". Just "allows it."

Their right to perform these pickets is what's at issue in the Supreme Court case that was argued yesterday. But the lunacy, stupidity and insanity of this position is what strikes me. Does this mean if we just expelled all homosexuals from America, we could then send our soldiers into battle knowing they could not be killed? A new policy of "MAME", 'Must Ask, Must Expel' would certainly cut down on Defense Dept. expenses, since armor and all defensive systems would become pointless. Send our soldiers into battle with boots, underwear, a gun and lots and lots of ammo. God'll keep 'em from harm.

Yea.

Think of the impression of Christianity this gives to those not familiar with its better works, and saner followers. Think of how all the soldiers of all the 'Christian' nations down through history must have died because there were homos in that nation's populace. It would seem to make hunting down homos the most important thing in the world. It would mean that the people who founded our nation, since a few soldiers died along the way to our independence, need to be held accountable for not writing 'and kill all the homos' into the Constitution.

I think the case should have been brought in a different way: Westboro is an insane asylum that is failing to protect the populace from its patients. It needs to be closed, and the inmates need to be interred at other, more competent institutions. Camarillo got closed out here during the Reagan governorship. Is Bellevue still available in New York?

(10:28:27 PM)(10:39:54 PM)

Back in the Saddle...

2010-10-07T11:19:00.000-07:00

(10/6/10 5:38:28 PM)
I’ve been beating myself up for a few days for not writing in a few days, after I’d pledged to myself that I’d write every day.
For a change, I’m just going to start writing here. Welcome to Mister Kelley’s Wild Ride:

It struck me that I used to be able to recall a face and a name when I met a person again, regardless of timelag or context. But that was, what, thirty years ago? Nowadays, I’m lucky to realize I’ve met someone before, unless I’ve had to work with, or for, that person. Yet when I’m back with that person, and reminded of the where or when, the whole context drops in place, and I remember entire conversations, histories, etc. Apparently, my flat memory model has self-reorganized into a paged model, perhaps because of the volume of experience that now fills my head. (How many neurons are wasted on the dozens of ad jingles and TV themes I experienced in my childhood? Or that the latest brain science has discovered that neurons communicate not just through synaptic signalling but through actually twitching physically, actually nudging the neuron next to it.) I pulled a shirt off the rack at home, to wear to a nice dinner, and where it came from never occurred to me. Yet when Dawn remarked that she’d bought it for me, that cue brought back the entire experience, the shop in Ventura, the smell of the shop and the location of the rack in the store. I could take you there right now. Fighting to make my brain work one way when it wants to work differently is a waste of time, now that I understand what it’s doing.

A side effect, or maybe just a related area, is that I still am looking forward to all the careers I was hoping to choose from, or at least try, when I was in high school. Comedian, mathematics teacher, paleontologist, outfielder for the Reds. This is not to be mistaken for immaturity. At least I hope not. Emotionally, I had to do a lot of growing after I stopped smoking and started growing up again. (The second-worst side effect of addiction is that you stop growing up the day the addiction kicks in. The worst side-effect is swirling down a toilet bowl of life, and trying to drag everyone you know down with you.) No, emotionally I’m mostly the grown-up I look like. But I still expect to get through this part ad then go on to a career in…see above. I think a lot of guys are stuck at their senior year in high school when it comes to self-image. Maybe that’s why guys still think women, younger women, will be attracted to them. Which can be pathetic to watch in even mild cases, much less the Trump or Hefner extravaganzas. Women don’t get off much easier. I think they get stuck around twenty-two, but that’s just my experience from the past.

A friend’s Facebook entry (one of her many today) remarked that one of the fastest ways to lose friends on Facebook is to be too focused. None of that here, eh? In fact, that may be why I’ve been a ‘net fan since about ’94, when I helped write a ‘B’ license domain request for a since-defunct company called Fibermux. That license became the most valuable asset they had when their parent company rolled them up and took all the paperwork back to Minnesota. I love disappearing down the rabbit hole, because it’s like living in the reference library of my brain’s various cubbyholes.

Running long…more on Thursday…
(10/6/10 6:02:15 PM)

Manufacturing: Make It In America (Again)

2010-09-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

Steny Hoyer's got a good post up at TheHill.com, the paper for the company town that is DC. It's an article on what we need to do to bring manufacturing back, or reestablish it, in America. And why. And what the Dems have been doing about it.
The rest of this post makes little sense if you don't read it and the comments (there are only seven) on it.

Apparently, my 'comments' were rejected by the administrator. Not sure why. So I'm posting them here. See, I'm a liberal, a Democrat, and I worked 15 years in manufacturing, developing shop floor systems for, among other companies, a job shop/aviation station out in Burbank, at the end of the southbound runway. Unofficial motto: 'We stand under what we sell.' Always proud of that job. I worked in electronics manufacturing, elastomer compounding, and repetitive systems. I loved it.

So when I shoot mine off on manufacturing, I have some experience, and an APICS cert, for those of you who know what that is.

This, then, is the post that wasn't:

@CurryWalker - So you will call your Republican Reps and Sens and tell them to support the Democratic "Make It In America" bill that they blocked yesterday, to give tax breaks for manufacturing jobs brought back to US and eliminate tax breaks for shipping jobs off-shore from now on? Yea, didn't think you would.

@Kimberlee - From '68 to 2008, 40 years, the White House had only two Democrats, Carter and Clinton, for a total of 12 years. For half of those 12 years, Congress was fully Republican (1995 on). Bush Junior had wall-to-wall Republican activism for six of his eight years, and got everything he wanted except the privatization of Social Security. I don't know what 46 years you're talking about. Do you?

@Knuckles - I worked in mfg for 15 years. The big reason Detroit died was because management fought every new technology, from seat belts to unleaded gas to antilock brakes, as well as new materials science and mfg technologies, until after the Japs had installed them in every car, made those cars better and cheaper, and then cleaned Detroit's clock. To this day, most SUVs are classified as trucks, and thanks to industry lobbying, head restraints are not required in those. But try to sell one without 'em. Union costs over non-union costs for labor were a tiny percentage of the differential among American versus foreign manufacturers of cars. American manufacturing management was just stoooopid. Example: Roger Smith, of GM, tried to replace every worker with a multi-million dollar robot. No redesign of process, no analysis of line layout, no knowledge of robotic technology's abilities. Just a 1:1 replacement. It's a wonder GM lasted until you could blame everything on Obama.

The reason why this recession will take so long to recover from is that we have no idle plants for workers to return to. Most of the jobs have left. The last major manufacturing industry is/was housing. Until someone has the balls to create an entire new, local industry (say, solar on every roof in America, which would create mfg jobs, installation companies, infrastructure investment, maintenance and repair businesses, reduce pollution by reducing burning for energy, and improve security by dispersing the national power-generation capacity) this recession is going to last, and America's employee class is going to be working for peanuts.

And that was the Republican plan all along. And you can look that up on the ATR.org web site. (Hi, Grover!)

Tax cuts and deregulation have been the order of the day for twelve years (1995 Gingrich Revolution to 2007 Dem Take Back of America,) and we're in the disaster that is the natural result of using those policies, exclusively, to run a country. And Republicans can't (or won't) propose anything else. "Party of Ideas" indeed.

Javier Makes My Day

2010-09-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

(07:01:14 PM)
I met Javier yesterday as I was registering voters at the Abbot Kinney Street Festival. Javier was one of the many I approached, fishing in a stream of people walking from booth to booth in the hot sun and the loud music of the annual neighborhood event. My Democratic Club always runs a booth there, getting volunteers for the upcoming election and selling swag to raise money for, well, the registration fee for this booth. Volunteering is never a financial success, but it's how we took America back from Cheney and Rove and their dwarf, Junior Bush.

I try not to 'profile' who might be a likely target for registration. I ask new young Yuppie parents, packs of Hispanic girls, black ladies with parasols, skatebaorders with tattoos. I'm not looking for Dems or Republicans (although I love a good face-off.) Dad always said "The more people who vote, the more Democrats get elected." Obama won his White House by more votes than all the Bushes put together, because we got the vote out, not by working to suppress the vote, like Richard Viguerie recommends to Republicans.

So when a stocky, sunburned guy came shuffling past, I asked 'Are you registered to vote?' He stopped, realizing I was talking to him, and said something in Spanish. Thick, Mexican Spanish, at least to my ever-so-Midwestern ears. I tried again, slower. 'Votar?' he asked. 'Si!' And I kept trying. 'Citizen? Are you a citizen?' 'Si!' he said, smiling. Then something about 'nuevo california' and 'Arizona no mas.' He barely had any English, and I was becoming certain this was a losing proposition, but he'd filled out forms before, and as I pointed at the spaces, we discussed in very bad whatever what each meant. 'What state or country were you born in?' I asked in several different ways. 'California? Arizona? Mexico?' trying to get him to mistakenly admit he was from south of the border, and couldn't really vote in the election. 'California! Anaheim!' he announced.

Javier was born somewhere near Anaheim back in 1973, which makes him 37. As far as I could figure it out, when he was one year old, his family moved back to Mexico. A death in the family back there. Grandfather? He stayed there until maybe four years ago, when he came back to Arizona (friends, family there, apparently) to get work. But since the recent SB1070 passed in Arizona, he has to show his papers 'six, seven, every day' as he showed me his Arizona drivers license, Social Security card and California birth certificate. So about six months ago, he moved to California.

He's working when there's work. His English is lousy, but how many of you have tried to learn a new language in your thirties? In fact, who among you would have the balls to move to a foreign country where your foreignness, and your lack of language, leaves you excluded from day-to-day socializing, and makes your job prospects only marginally better than the place you left? Which is why most first-generation immigrants have a better work ethic than most 'I was born here' Americans. They've taken the big chance.

Which is why I was proud to register him to vote. When we got to the 'Party' checkboxes, he pointed at me. 'You?' 'No, you choose.' He pointed at me again. 'What you?' I pointed at the banner above the West LA Democratic Club's booth. Javier looked at the sign, looked back down at the choices, and checked the 'Democratic Party' box.

He finished the rest of the form, signed and dated it, and I gave him his receipt. I also gave him a Party Endorsements sheet.
'Gracias' he said.
'Muchas gracias, Javier.'
He made my day.

And that's what we get for taking people as they come, instead of profiling them.

Now I need to make sure he gets to the polls.
Welcome home, American...
(07:29:14 PM)(07:38:29 PM)

SEC, Allen Stanford's Ponzi, and More Of The Same from the GOP

2010-09-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

(10:56:00 AM)
Watching C-Span while we pack to head back from the funeral and our so-called vacation. SEC IG H.David Kotz testifying and answering questions at Dodd's Senate Banking Committee, about the R. Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme. The two salient points of his examination are that the SEC office in Texas figured lout this was a Ponzi scheme in 97, 99, 02, 04 and 05, before the SEC actually brought action in 08 & 09, and that the Texas office did not get news to the DC Main Office until the 2005 examination.
I don't know who was running the SEC office in texas in the mid-90s. Normally, I'd expect a Democratic appointee. But with the Gingrich revolution changing a lot of rules in Washington, and the Republicans owning both houses, so any appointee (Barrett, head of Enforcement in that office, as they just said,) was probably picked to clear the hurdle of Republican expectations about enforcement: Don't do any enforcement.
This was exemplified by the appointments of first Harvey Pitt and then Chris Cox as heads of Junior Bush's SEC in Washington. And Kotz's testimony implies that, had Madoff not confessed to his crimes, the SEC probably would not have done anything about the Stanford fraud. Sen. Jim Bunning, and Key Bailey Hutchison are shocked, shocked I say, that the people they voted to appoint to these offices were completely incompetent.
This is all of a piece with the GOP's attitude towards enforcement of almost any laws or rules that Big Money is subject to: First, avoid passing any regulations. Second, appoint or permanently hire and place chairs and staff that are explicitly opposed to enfocement, or are untrained in the regs to be enforced. Third, reduce or eliminate funding for the agencies that do enforcement. And finally, denigrate that function of government and anyone who would perform that function as the law requires and the legislators expected when they passed the rule. Remember, 'original intent' is valid for a 250-year-old Constitution, but not for the 40-year-old Clean Air Act, or the 1937 creation of the SEC.

And if you'd like this kind of quality operation to continue in government, sign up to the GOP's new Pledge to America, another repackagingof the same old crap, including the enforcement attitude I remarked on above.
Jon Stewart did a fun analysis of that Pledge, an analysis that only works as a video. Watch.
(11:25:36 AM)

A Shame About The Washington Post: Bad Education, Worse Reporting.

2010-09-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

(8:30:55 AM)
We’ve spent the last two nights with friends, at their condo on the beach on the DelMarVa peninsula, southwest of DC. Dawn seems to have caught a cold, and is living on Sudafed and an occasional pinot grigio. But the weather’s been great, the water, too, and I’ve managed to avoid most of the noise going on in politics. The Post is the only generally available paper down here, and after skimming a couple of copies when we were in DC for the funeral, it seems pointless to read during our ‘vacation’ time.

I mean, how far can a paper fall from its heyday as the paper that broke Watergate, printed the Pentagon Papers, broke a president? Now, the two copies I’ve skimmed this week each had three of the ‘A’ section pages used for ads against the Dept of Ed’s proposed regulation of private training schools. The ads are because the Post Company makes most of its money from its Kaplan Educational company, which trains people to take tests, among other things.

Most of WaPo’s editorials were anti-Obama, both from the right wingers and from their supposed lefties. I guess they’re trying to out-right the rightwingers who left the company to found Politico, a site I avoid unless I want the views from what I describe as the rational, or Rockefelller, Right.

Politico is for the Republican left-behinds, who want a party somewhere between the Democratic Party and the TeaBags, but can’t seem to see that the Democratic Party is currently selling the mid-seventies Republican Party line. The Dem leadership certainly isn’t pushing much that can be called progressive or forward looking, at least not by seventies standards.

The success of the right wing , the Kochs and the Bradleys, Norquist and Limbaugh, in pushing the ‘legitimate political spectrum’ to the far end of the right wing, is not the amazing thing. It’s that they continue to whine that it’s not right-wing enough, that they are still victims of a terrible communistical socialist conspiracy, now headed by a Manchurian-candidate muslim from Kenya.

And Politico, and the Washington Post, are far too scared of them to report on this, to do a history of how this happened, naming names, listing organizations, and doing an accounting of it. Not as an indictment, or to reverse it, just to, ahem, ‘report’ it. (You guys do remember how to report, don’t you?)

An analogy, for those Redskins fans: Remember when the 50-yd-line was at the middle of the stadium, and the endzone goal posts were at either end of the field? Welll, politics in America now has the left end goal post at the center of the stadium, the 50-yd line at the wall in front of the first seats at the end of the stadium, and the right goal post most of the way up the stands. What used to be the middle of the field is now the far left end of play, and what used to be out of bounds, waaaayyyy out of bounds, is now the place where most of the plays occur.

This analogy probably will be lost on most Post readers. I mean, have you read their Sports page lately? Sheesh. Two-day old line scores for their own Nationals. I wonder if they’ll print the Redskins’ results before Tuesday.

A shadow of its former self. No wonder they’re trying to make up the margin by swindling folks who need vocational training into taking on college-size debt.

PS: Isn’t it a shame that I can write ‘college-size debt’ and you know, probably first-hand, what I mean? More on that another day.
(8:59:02 AM)(9:07:22 AM)

Dad's International Sponge Circuit

2010-09-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

(8:24:45 AM)

Been off the air for a week. A promise to myself, to write daily, and post daily, broken. Ah well, probably break it the next time I bury a parent, too. Big whup. Back at it today. Weirdly, I’m actually in Delaware, ground zero for the TeaBagger Effect, personified in Christine O’Donnell. And I could vent on that for a week or so, easy.
But my wife and I are here visiting friends, making parents’ friends into personal friends, after my father’s funeral at Arlington. I haven’t looked at the net since I posted pictures of that event, largely because every time I got to the point in the day I wanted to write, Dawn had tuned into the ‘This American Life’ site, put on the headphones, and gone to sleep. Beats hell out of sleeping pills. But since we only brought one netbook with us, I end up having to just relax, read a book (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 5 stars) or go for a walk. Vacation. I’d almost forgotten what it was.
It’s amazing how, in just a few years, Dawn and I have gone, as a couple, from two or three multi-week vacations a year to having to sneak a week on the DelMarVa coast, using my Dad’s funeral as an excuse to get away. We’re both to blame for the change, Dawn’s school and my annoying political habits, and we’re both also subject to the duties of children to their aging parents, which have been sudden and large for both of us over the last five years. First Dawn’s, then mine. And of course, the ‘for better or worse’ clause makes hers mine, and vice versa.
Nonetheless, this scheduled but unstructured avoidance of responsibilities, this vacay, has been relaxing. A chance to remind us of how well we vacate together. Little things remind us of other vacations we took in the early years of our marriage. Conversations with all the people, friends as well as relatives, that came for Dad’s memorial, inspire us to make a better effort to get back on the travel habit. We’ve never seen Asia, or Africa. Dawn’s never seen any of England, and, well, there’s a lot of America we’ve each seen without the other, and want to share. Crested Butte, for example. And the Montana cabin Dawn built.
The folks we’re visiting (I’m at their dining room table at this moment, only one up. No, not any more, Bob just walked past to go get the morning papers,) are off in a few days for a three-week trip to Paris, perhaps my favorite place on the planet. While there, they’ll visit friends of my family’s, friends I’ve known since I was 11. These friends met those friends at our wedding.
Make friends. Travel. Introduce your friends to one another. Meet their friends, and pay attention to them, because you can learn about the world from them, and maybe you can see the world from their perspective first-hand.
My dad jokingly referred to this as his ‘sponge circuit,’ built of brothers of his, of my mom’s, professors from the many universities my dad had attended or taught at over decades, and of course, friends from politics and from the war, WWII.

Build your own sponge circuit. Go sponge of those folks for a few days. Let them come sponge off you. It’s a better, more authentic experience than hotels and travel brochures. It’s the original social network.
And it beats hell out of sitting at your computer, reading Facebook.

Done for now. The beach calls, and I must answer…
(8:55:03 AM)(9:04:16 AM)

At Least Government Has To Tell You When They Take Your Money

2010-09-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

(4:33:07 PM)

Well, you can't say our home-builders aren't innovative. Faced with the collapse of their market's demand in the face of an over-built supply, they need cash, or at least an asset to leverage. (Don't we all?) The banks got theirs (from us), and ain't lending to no one, no way, no how. So where to get the cash, where to find an asset.

How about making one up out of thin air, or more precisely (and expectedly) out of your pocket or mine?

Developers have started tacking a 'commission' covenant onto the sales contracts for tract homes they've built. A covenant that says that every time that home is sold, for the next 99 years, that developer gets one per cent of the sale price. Nice, huh? Automatic inflation on homes, just to cover, not the builder's cost and profit margin, but his future cash needs, as insurance against another disaster caused by, umm, err, his housing industry.

Not outrageous enough? How's about this one: they don't even have to show you that covenant. Yep, they can write a covenant that says anything, and you won't know about it. Whether it says they get 1% of every sale of that home, or that the broker must always send a dozen roses to their sainted aunt to celebrate the sale, you won't know a thing about it. Isn't it nice to know that you are participating in a sale where you're not allowed to know all the terms. Doesn't that sound Republican?

Well, two can play at this game.

One of the reasons why the housing bubble disaster happened was that no one writing paper, whether the original mortgages or the the AAA ratings on bundles of mortgages, or the insurance on those securitized bundles, no one had to hold onto that paper. But, as the developers' covenant trick proves, we can track sales and corporations for almost a hundred years.

So how about stretching out those commissions over the life of the mortgage too?

Instead of the broker getting his whole commission the day the mortgage is signed, regardless of whether or not the mortgage ever is paid, how about a piece of each mortgage payment going to that broker's bank account? Smooths out his income, and more importantly, keeps the quality of the mortgages up, since the guy dioesn't want to do the work for a mortgage that won't be paying next year because the person goes bankrupt. If the mortgage gets paid off in a sale, he gets fully paid off from that.

Same for the securities that Fitch or Moody's rates. Maybe they should be required to take half of their fee in the offering they're rating. And have to hold those secutities or bonds for, say, two years before they could sell them. They'd be much more likely to be realistic about their ratings.

I can dream, can't I? But we know the house never rigs the game to improve the odds that every one does better, just so that the house does better. Kind of an Ayn Rand thing. Me first, screw everyone else. We can see how well that worked out for America, can't we?

In the meantime, I've moved my mortgage to my credit union. Not because I hate banks. Just because I'd like my mortgage to be held by the institution that wrote it. If that had been the rule across the board, none of this crap would've happened to begin with.

But those financial guys, well, you can't say they're not innovative. You just wish they were a little less gung-ho about it.
(04:55:07 PM)(05:04:18 PM)

A Real Reality Show

2010-09-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

(11:38:05 PM)
This one's quick.
I don't watch 'reality TV', mostly because it's less 'real' than anything else on TV. (I do know what's going on in reality, thanks to 'The Soup' on E! channel on Fridays. Funnier than hell !)
They swap wives, swap spit, swap in the dark. They date, they fight, they curse and backbite anddrss badly to cover the disasters of their extreme makeovers. They're reality show contestants, on islands, in the hilss, from Bachelors to Housewives.
And they'll talk about anything, or anyone, as long as it's on camera.
Except one thing.

So let me pitch my new Reality Show: 'GLA$$ HOU$E$' : Real people list the actual value of all their assets and debts , reveal their income amounts and sources and review their last tax return.

What if everyone found out that none of us are making any money?
What if we actually knew how much money the people we look at, on TV or in the movies, in politics or sports, make, and who they're paying?
Wouldn't you watch to see all the expenses of Lady Gaga, and how much she spends to avoid paying her taxes.
Wouldn't you like to see where Limbaugh spends his $400 million multi-year contract?

I don't know where to go with this, but I know this is the only real taboo in America. We'll put snuff porn on the internet, send nude pics of ourselves to our lovers using cell phones, we'll publish video of animals being squashed by feet dressed in fancy shoes. That last was just declared legal under First Amendment rights. I don't know where to go with that, either.

But dare anyone to put their actual tax return up on the web, with their name on it, even if all the other person info is redacted, and you'll see them stare at you as if you'd proposed using their 4-year-old as a food source.

It's said that in France, they will talk about their finances, but never about their sex lives. I know it's just the opposite here in America. Because money is the real porn in America. And how much you really have, and how you really got it, is a secret everyone keeps, and no one wants to tell. Parents hide it from children, spouses hide it from each other, services now investigate it for fiancees before they get married, because 'I love you and trust you' doesn't include money and finances.

And no, if this show gets picked up, I won't tell you how much they pay for it.
Because there's a difference between Honesty and Reality. And there's only so much of either we can handle.
(12:08:24 AM)

My 9-11 Isn't Like Yours

2010-09-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

Please indulge me.
My experience of Sept. 11th separates me from my fellows in America, and every 9-11 I want to talk about it.

I was in Naples Italy, vacationing with Dawn, when the planes hit. We toured Pompeii (couldn't get home, after all) while the ash fell on Manhattan. We made it to Paris and stayed with family friends of my father from WWII, while we waited for the flight ban to be lifted, and we attended bi-lingual services at Notre Dame, for all the losses in America, and all the stranded travelers in Paris, while the Mayor went on the radio hourly asking for citizens to call in to volunteer to take in these same travelers that had overwhelmed Paris's hotels.

We came home to zombie-followers of Bush, liberal friends all, who had seen 8(?) days of uncommercial, unplotted TV news, seen the attack played ad infinitum and the speeches of Junior and Rudy run on perpetual loops on TV.

We had seen the true reaction of the world, in Italy, France and England, among locals and immigrants like our taxi driver in Paris, a Muslim who refused to let us pay for our fare.'We're all Americans now.' The old crone from Greece, traveling to her brother's funeral, who patted my hand during the world-wide minute of silence while we were in the air from Rome to Paris, 'So sad. So sad.' The French Antarctic explorers we stayed with, in their eighties now, who brought their 5-nation reunion to a halt as we entered, and raised their glasses to these two disheveled Americans, "We are all Americans." I damned near cry as I type this, remembering their unanimous pride in America.

But the thing that I remember most is the monument the Parisians have put up, on the far corner of the gardens of Les Invalides, to the victims of the series of bombings in Paris in the mid-90's, bombings most of us never heard about.
It is a fountain of a stylized, single person in a long coat, standing on a small rise. The person's backbone is absolutely straight, a rectangular bar than cannot be bent. The person holds something in the crook of its left arm. And that something explains the rise the statue stands on. Because that something is the person's head, eye-to-eye with the observer, open and unflinching. While the water of the fountain flows slowly out of the severed neck of the person, killed in a terrorist attack, and flows down the coat, the person continues to stand, unbowed, open-eyed, undaunted.

I needed that monument that day, to remind me that people before us have known how to survive, how to continue, how to deal.

And I recall it as a symbol of all the people I met in those two weeks when I couldn't return home, and it counters the hatred my government later ginned up against all those people for not doing what our president wanted in Iraq. It reminds me of the opportunity America and the rest of the world lost by having the government we had that day.

And until I die, I will never forget that, and I doubt I will ever forgive those bureaucrats, Republicans all, for throwing that opportunity away.

Second BP Spill Coats Partners and Contractors

2010-09-10T05:38:00.000-07:00

(04:40:03 AM)
I hate that I am not surprised at BP's blackwashing of its responsibility for the Deepwater platform's oil volcano this summer. After sitting through hours of Congressional hearings broadcast on C-SPAN (god help me, I've got it on satellite in my car, even) it was obvious that Hayward and his fellow fuck-ups at BP were doing everything they could to minimize perceptions, of the spill and of their part in causing it. By the time BP's incident report came out Thursday (NYTimes article and BP Report) I don't think anyone was surprised when it basically said, 'Yea, it happened, but it wasn't our fault, so fuck off!'

And the neat thing about that attitude, that corporate stance is...they'll make it stick. Because it's the new American standard, and we're who they're selling on that position. We'll buy it, because, for all the lip-service our culture has given responsibility and accountability, we don't expect anyone to actually own up to it anymore.

I'm not sure when it started to fade away. John Wayne's characters always admitted when they were wrong, whether they liked it or not. President Truman said 'The Buck Stops Here' and became famous for being the little backwoods senator who went from contractor plant to food processor, exposing graft, corruption, and war-profiteering during WWII. President Johnson decided not to run for a second term, because his actions in Viet Nam had become too devisive, and even Nixon acted on the consequences of his crimes in office, the only president to ever resign. But it took him years to come close to admitting his crimes. Carter took responsibility for the Iranian hostage crisis, and lost the presidency partially on the actions he took and didn't take in that event.

But Reagan claimed to not know, or not believe, that crimes were committed in the Iran-Conta debacle, and his VP and successor, George HW Bush, pardoned everyone to avoid anyone contradicting his claim that he 'wasn't in the loop' on those crimes. Clinton admitted mistakes of policy but never those of his peccadillos, and the Republicans who hunted him never saw the destruction of a nation as a bad thing. And since Bush Junior never made any mistakes, he had nothing to take responsibility for.

But at least we can vote on them, and vote them out.

But BP and other corporations seem to have arrived at a wonderful point here in America. With almost no exception, they are never wrong. Their products don't fail, their practices are legal, their motive is always and exclusively to maximize profits for the shareholder this quarter, and that's the only thing a company is supposed to think about, isn't it?

If anything goes wrong, it's not their fault. GM failed, not because it fought against its own lack of modernization and its refusal to see the future, but because employees were paid too much. Lehman Bros. didn't fail because they were leveraged 30 to 1 in a market that relied on a perpetual-motion machine of always-rising home prices, but because the Fed didn't lend them a hand. The collapse of the US economy isn't because of thirty years of steady defunding of regulatory agencies combioned with the denigration of that function in government, combined with a religious aversion to paying the bill for civilization (otherwise known as 'taxes'.) No, it was caused by an out-of-power Congressional fag running interference for Fannie and Freddie. Not one person has been removed from office for starting the longest most expensive war in America's history. Because Saddam attacked us on 9-11.

Don't get me started on Iran and Iraq. See tomorrow's post on 9-11 for that.

The American corporation has become impervious to blame. The corporation is used, not to create something long-lasting and useful, but to shield its owners from responsibility. LLC means exactly that. S Corp is for that specific purpose. To avoid human, personal responsibility for the consequences of human actions. A corporation is a piece of paper that authorizes human action. It does nothing until a human does something in its name. This is why not one single person has gone to jail for destroying the world's largest economy. (Bernie Madoff doesn't count. He wasn't accepting blame, he confessed to avoid being murdered.) Experts and corporate officers can never be wrong because...well, because then no one would hire them as experts and corporate officers any more.

This is a far larger subject than a blog entry can do justice, so thanks for sticking with it this long. A complete rewrite of the corporate contract is in order, from its place in society and its goals, to how it is monitored, fined, jailed (if a corporation is a person, it should be capable of being jailed) and a method of involuntary death, for being a menace to society, should be defined.

But when you look around you, at the 'culture of accountability' that Bush promised, once 'the adults [were] in charge' as Cheney declared, notice that almost no one of any importance takes any responsibility for anything, anymore.

Ever.
(05:22:13 AM)(05:33:38 AM)

Republican Dream, American Nightmare

2010-09-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

Scene: Night. A standard two-story suburban house, on fire, fills the screen.
As the camera pulls back, waist-level close-up of glowing screen of hand-held credit card terminal, held by a work-gloved hand. The other glove holds a credit card.
The screen blinks..."WAITING..."... "WAITING..."
Camera pulls back again, showing two men, the left one in a heavy coat, his gloved hands holding the terminal and the credit card.
The man on the right, disheveled hair, one untucked button-down shirt-tail hanging out over his slacks, looks nervously from the burning house to the terminal screen.
Suddenly the screen brightens. It says "APPROVED."

The gloved hand hands the credit card to the nervous man, and turns offscreen as the camera pulls further back.

"OK, Let's Put It OUT!!!" the gloved man shouts, as camera now cranes back and above, revealing him as the leader of a crew of firemen who've been waiting to see if they'd get paid for their work.
The fire crew leaps into action, hoses bursting into spray over the house, surrounding it, spraying from two or three directions.

Over closing action, screen reads:
"REPUBLICAN DREAM. AMERICAN NIGHTMARE."

Voiceover: If you don't want this to be America's future, Vote Democratic.

-----------
If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention. Read this.

Koran-flavored Burgers...yum!

2010-09-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

(01:32:23 PM)(Too many synapses firing today...)
Down in Florida, some clown is planning to celebrate 9-11 by burning the Koran.
And they're already rioting over it in Indonesia and Baghdad.
Out there, they don't understand that in the US, especially in the hinterlands, any boob can slap a cross on his lawn, claim to be a preacher, and collect a few parishioners whose cars can't get them into a real church anymore.
Such is the preacher at the Dove Ministry, whose 80 followers help put the 'duh' in Florida.

But if their religious convictions demand that they burn Korans, it's their First Amendment right.
And no one can stop them. And every news camera in America will be down there in the boonies of Swampsuck, Florida, to record it.
And broadcast it.
Worldwide.
Regardless of General Petreaus's saying that their doing this will threaten increased hostilities against Americans worldwide, especially our soldiers.
Cause these are good Americans: self-centered, me-first, whatever-it-takes-to-get-on-TV Americans.
And any clown can drag the Weber out of the garage, throw in some Kingsford and a match, and then toss on his kid's Science book, a picture of the president or the religious book of his choice, and grill burgers over the flames.

Yes, this is America. And there is only one response.

Collect a gross of King James Bibles, a box of Torahs, a smattering of Book of Mormon, another gross of catholic Bibles, a few Shinto scrolls and a couple of Buddhist prayer wheels (for color).
Hell, maybe even a picture of Madelyn Murray O'Hare.

Drive 'em down to that church at showtime.
And with all those cameras running, toss 'em in with that bozo's Korans, and light 'em all up.
Thus proving that America makes no law respecting the establishment of religion.
By demonstrating a complete absence of respect for all those religions.

Maybe the Muslims that are so threatened by a copy of their sacred book being burned will get over it.
I mean, Allah'll still be there, won't he?

And maybe Americans will see how stupid they look to the rest of the world.
Because, for at least one day, this small-minded yahoo is the world's image of 'American.'
And we should be ashamed.

(01:48:49 PM)(01:52:22 PM)

NRA: Not Real Americans

2010-09-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

(07:27:30 PM last night)
Now, I've promised myself to write every day. I let people know, but I don't expect much in the way of readership. And I haven't been disappointed. But I wrote Saturday about the SouthBayOpenCarry card table at the Hermosa Beach Arts Fair. And that brought me readers. Go read the comments. They're fun. I learned several things.

One: Someone is monitoring for this sort of thing. If you Google for any keyword in my post, you will NOT find my post. I looked through 20 pages of Google results for each of about ten terms. Nothing. (Humbling, but part of the scientific method.) Two possibilties are left: I've got more than one Facebook friend who is a Republican, or the NRA is running a spider and has zip-coded rapid response teams. Maybe they even get points at the local gun club. But it was surprising how easy it was to get a response.

Two: Not one of them read what I wrote. I mean, it went in their eyes, and then set off their lower extremities, causing knees to jerk. But that's not reading.

Three: They come in a wide variety of closed minds and jerking knees.

Four: They assume I know nothing of guns, am therefore afraid of them, and in a couple of cases, that a few sessions with one would cure me of said fear.

(07:35:55 PM pause for dinner and a show)
(08:12:12 AM this morning)

The point to my column was something rarely remarked on, that the second amendment was unique in that the authors felt an obvious need to explain why it was included. They explained that a state, in order to remain free, needed a well-regulated militia, because, until WWII, the U.S. didn't see the need to maintain a significant national standing army. It drafted as needed, but only if the volunteer militias of the various states were insufficient to whatever needs the national interest were.

They didn't justify the amendment with a need for personal protection, or a explanation that every other member of 'We The People' should be looked upon with suspicion. In fact, secure in their homes and papers is a completely separate amendment.

Not one of my commentors responded to this.

How they did respond was fun to read. One gave me several Jefferson quotes, all at the ready, pre-fab from his local NRA chapter. One quote says, almost verbatim, that in the range of sports that can keep you in shape, shooting stuff keeps you sharp without taxing you physically (see 'video games') while games played with balls require too much exercise, (and probably bathing, too.) More on this later.

Another was a woman who commented that my blog wouldn't take comments. A dial-tone that can type.
And of course, personal favorite:
"Ah, the problem... A member of the party of treason, hate, and racism complaining about the 2nd Amendment."

I especially like the "Ah, " at the beginning. As if the author has given this a significant amount of consideration. And this is the great analysis that resulted. At least the one with the list of quotes could keep track of where to cut and paste them from. This one just had to get back from the toilet to watch the second half of Glenn Beck.

Finally, granted, I haven't been shooting...since the Santa Anita Firing Range closed. Always liked that place. Because at a range, just like Jefferson explained, it's a sporting location, like a bowling alley. Bring in the bowling ball/gun, or use one from the house. Ask for a lane, get a scoresheet or 10, maybe you have your own shoes/earcuffs, maybe you use the house's. Don't bowl in the other guy's lane, wait til they roll/shoot before you do. And at the end, you've checked your game, improved on a weakness or developed a new skill, and maybe picked up a twenty betting with someone on who can score best. And you need a shower. Burnt powder stinks worse that cigarettes.

I started shooting when my grandfather let me and my cousin help build a .22 rifle. 'Why does the barrel have eight sides?' I won a few contests with .22s at Boy Scouts when I was living in Wisconsin. My dad was a teacher, not a factory guy, so I was usually one of the boys left in class when the rest went out for deer season or duck season. Ever been to Horicon Marsh? One of my best friends died of a blood disease at twelve. They buried him in his Scout's uniform, with the key's to his new Ski-doo, and his .22LR.

Since then, I've practiced with a little 5-shot S&W Police Chief thumbless revolver, a few automatics from .22 to 9mm, and a 586 S&W which is just dead on the target if I use wadcutters. And that Henry Survival .22 rifle breaks down small for store and carry. (Buy American!) Just needs a little plumbers tape before closing the stock, to keep it watertight.

But my ex-cop and cop friends all recommend 1) don't have a gun at home, because you'll shoot a friend, and 2) if you HAVE to have one at home, have a light action pump shotgun. Because a) you or your wife won't have to aim it well to hit something, b) even if you don't hit anything, you'll scare the crap out of an intruder and alert the neighbors, and c) (and this is a biggie) shot pellets stop somewhere inside the wall, while most penis-replacement bullets with overloads (the usual for macho men) travel through walls, across streets, through furniture, endangering your neighbors several apartments or even houses away.

This last is why open carry is dumb. Because there's just nothing that thrills me more than half a dozen scared, under-experienced, poorly-trained civilians pulling down at the same incident, and starting to fire.

A final note: Women who feel socially inadequate in current American culture get breast implants. Men who feel similarly threatened buy guns. In both cases, I feel sad that you think so little of yourself, and of Americans, that you think this will improve you.

But at least tits won't go off accidentally in the line at Starbucks.

(08:46:46 AM)(09:00:45 AM)

Koch-heads and Koch-Suckers...

2010-09-06T19:22:00.000-07:00

(6:11:05 PM)
First, let's be straight about their names. It's spelled K-O-C-H, but it's pronounced 'COKE', like the drink from Atlanta or the drug from Bolivia. It's the first subterfuge in the lives of Charles and David Koch, cause if you hear the name, you don't know how it's spelled, and vice-versa.

I won't go over Jane Mayer's article in the 8/30/10 New Yorker. If you've read it and not been appalled at the Koch brothers and their operations, you're not an American. Why you should care: They own the second largest privately-held corporation in America, and they own the Tea Party operations nationwide. If they weren't funding the Tea party, it wouldn't exist.

But in reviewing the article, a couple of things struck me. One was how much money they have, and how they lie to themselves about it. David Koch jokes that he learned business through buying low, selling high, year after year, until (punchline:) "Father died and left me three hundred million dollars!" And that was 1967 dollars, when the average annual income was around $7,300, a house ran about $14K and a new car was $2,375. So this wasn't like a measly $300M is today.

Fred Koch, fresh from MIT, invented a newer way to refine oil to gasoline. But when Big Oil of the time (1930s) shut him out, he went to Soviet Russia and helped them set up refineries based on his technology. It's where he made his early money, until Stalin started confiscating everything and purging his associates. He came back to the states, started an oil company of his own, and in the late 50's, was a founder of the John Birch Society. Apparently, he was unable to tell the difference between a democratic republic and a totalitarian dictatorship. Something else Fred left his sons.

So neither David nor his brother Charles are what you would be called self-made men. Not like their father, who actually invented something after his graduation from MIT. But they like to appear philanthropic. On the first page of Mayer's article, she lists The following donations by David H. Koch:
$ 2.5M   - American Ballet Theatre
100.0M - Lincoln Center refurb
    20.0M - Am Museum of Natural History
    10.0M - MOMA
    40.0M - Sloan Kettering Cancer Ctr

That's roughly $175 Million. Since 2008. From a guy who, along with his brother, is worth $35 BILLION. And, along with his brother, owns, OWNS, a conglomerate with $100BILLION in annual revenues. This isn't a philanthropist. His total donation, over several years, is one-half of one per cent of their net worth. It's not even a major part of the interest he's earning on his principal.
And what's his brother, Charles, doing with his money. According to interviews, his goal is to tear government "out at the root."

So these are small men, recipients of the luck of which uterus they turned up in.
They keep anyone from looking hard at them, by paying the high and mighty of society to look the other way.

And they have become what their father despised. Corporate squatters who run off anyone who threatens their lazy corporate fortunes.

This was the other thing I realized, reading the article. Remember, dear old dad, Fred Koch, ran off to help the Communists when Big Oil wouldn't let him play, wouldn't try something new. Now that the Koch brothers ARE Big Oil, they will do anything and everything to prevent new technologies from gaining a foothold, or from American citizens from dmanding that they actually pay for what they list as 'externalities' on their books: massive oil spills (convicted), benzene dumps (convicted), deaths from exploding refineries (settled out of court), and massive numbers of cancers from from formaldehyde, of which they produce 2.2 Billion gallons a year.

This last the EPA is trying to finally issue a carcinogen notice on. Which is one of the big reasons why the Koch Bros ginned up Americans For Prosperity, which ginned up the Tea Party, which 'terrorized' Congressmen all last summer, to swing back the few Republicans who'd seen Obama's huge numbers at election time and after, and had become willing to work with him. Anything to stop Democrats from actually holding Big Oil, including the Koch Brothers, accountable. Anything to prevent competition. Anything to be able to destroy the existing government and run it themselves.

Almost as if Stalin had been twins...
(06:54:40 PM)(07:19:07 PM)

'Nice gun'

2010-09-04T17:01:00.000-07:00

(3:31:39 PM)
Ah, election season, and a young, insecure man's fancy turns to open carry laws.

Have you ever read the 'Bill Of Rights', the first ten amendments to the US Constitution? They were demanded by a few of the state delegations in order to get the Constitution signed and ratified to begin with, so these ten are particularly special. And if you read them as a whole, you'll notice that these say what governemnt can and cannot do, with varying degrees of specificity. They don't say why any of these amendments, these rights, are included. They just are. Deal with it.

Except one.

Remember, these were men (yes, only men) were born into a era of western culture when skill and training rhetoric, debate, argument were required of an educated man. The written word was particularly chosen, a phrase was included in a formal document for a reason, the order of words in a sentence were chosen to underline the thoughts in that sentence. Arguments were built with craft and care.

So why is the second amendment only one that the founders thought needed an explanation, a justification? And that explanation of the need precedes the definition of the right, so the reader has to read 'why' before reading 'what' about the right.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

I'm not going to get into all the other discussions, the history, the 'shall not be infringed.' But I always find it interesting that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof' isn't explained, nor is 'the right of the people to be secure in their persons, house, papers...', etc. You get the idea. Read through them all, it only takes a couple of minutes.

So the idea that the right to bear arms is just like all the other rights is, well, wrong. It had a situational restriction on it. And once a state was secure (in that it got to govern itself, and wasn't threatened by , at the time, the French, the Spanish or especially the English) this 'right' was expected to be unnecessary.

This all comes up because the SouthBayOpenCarry group had a table at the Hermosa Beach Art fair today. And the two of them (pathetic, huh?) were packing heat.

I rode my bike down to breakfast in Hermosa this morning, to enjoy its annual Labor Day street festival, without having to deal with parking. Lots of booths, selling jewelry, paintings, lawn furniture, vitamins, pet adoption, you've been to one of these. Roasted corn, tacos, bratwurst, Pink Floyd tribute band, followed by one doing Neil Young's early stuff....and in the strip behing the band's stage, the political booths.

I had friends staffing the South Bay Democratic Clubs' stand. And we reviewed the other operations in that semi-circle. Join me: The John Birch Society (no, I'm not kidding) had a full booth, preprinted vinyl banner, and a foam core sign: 'Stand Up For Freedom. Repeal Obamacare!' Well, at least they're consistent. Like Koch (founding) father, like Koch sons. There was the Southbay Republican Club, a surfing elephant their unlikely logo. They had several 'Meg 2010' signs. That's all there is on the sign. 'Meg' above, '2010' below. Of course, there was a Christian Evagelist booth.

Off across the bike path, some poor kid had apparently driven in from up north, set up a card table, and hung several small hand-made signs, some saying 'Legalize Marijuana' signs, a two saying 'Vote Nov 2nd', and three clipboards of petitions. Not a single mention of Prop 19. A friend at the Dems booth and I whipped together three 'Vote YES on Prop 19' signs, and I walked them over, along with a roll of tape. The kid was surprised, happy, and promised to return the tape.

When my wife's with me, she lets me chat with friends, but makes me stay away from the other booths. After a few years, a wife's voice stays in a guy's head, even when she's in an all-day class 20 miles away. But not poking a stick at the OpenCarry Clowns was damned hard.

Two guys, both over-built, like the wannabecops you see parodied in movies, were standing in front of a pathetic cardtable, again with a couple of clipboard with petitions. Both were sporting holstered automatics. One wore purple Cons high-tops, I suppose to prove gun nuts are cute, too. The SouthBayOpenCarry 'militia'. Look em up, they do neighborhood clean-up, like Heal the Bay volunteers or the Girl Scouts. They just do it armed for Islamic (or Democratic) assault.

I'm standing there in black and yellow bike clothes, taller than either of these clowns. It was all I could do not to poke them with a stick, the old 'What part of "Well-regulated" don't you understand?' argument, just to see if I could get one to pull down on a longhair in spandex, thus ending their group's effort in the South Bay in one unfortunate photo.

I considered explaining to them the difference of the second amendment, as I did at the opening of this blog. But cowards with guns are not the most educable population.

Son I rode home instead, because my wife wants me at the house, not getting bailed out of jail.
(04:31:17PM)(04:52:03 PM)

The Hand of Sarah Palin

2010-09-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

(04:34:38pm)
There it is. Sarah Palin’s hand. The picture that launched a thousand stories. “She can’t remember what she’s talking about,” says the Left. “The poor man’s teleprompter,” Sarah herself calls it in her speeches, according to the latest in Vanity Fair, making indirect fun of Obama’s use of more modern technology. Personally, I enjoyed the word play, that “this was the hand penned by the hand of Sarah Palin.”

But did anyone read the damned thing? I mean, besides Sarah? Because there’s a lot written on that tiny hand.

It starts with the word ‘Energy’. This includes oil, which is taxed in her state to fill the Alaska Permanent Fund, specifically to send a check to every man, woman and child in Alaska, every year. 2009’s payout? $1305 to any resident who’d been there a year. Sweet.

I’ll just leave to the reader the exercise of listing all the ways this contradicts her attitude towards taxation, government support of citizens, government regulation of business…

The hand ends with ‘Lift American Spirit,’ a nice, content-free reminder about her big finish in whatever speech she’s giving.

It’s the three words in the middle that say so much, about her, and about the self-knowledge that the GOP is selling lies. That if they told the truth, they’d be done for.

The line originally reads ‘Budget Cuts’, but then ‘Budget’ is crossed out, and ‘Tax’ is written under it. Now, the message is ‘Tax Cut’. Why?

Because if the Republicans ever actually listed the programs, the volume of cuts, the level of national financial destruction that would be necessary to perform their advertised magic act of tax cuts combined with a balanced budget…well, it’s not that they’d never win another election. It’s that Jan Brewer would finally be proven right, there would be decapitated bodies in the deserts of Arizona…and the forests of Utah, and the swamps of Louisiana and Mississippi. Bodies of Republican officeholders and candidates, their FOX pundits, and all their hangers-on. (I’m talking to you, Grover ‘Sign the No New Taxes pledge’ Norquist, you lying, America-hating weasel.)

Did Sarah understand this? Of course not. She’s on the payroll now, she won’t be missing any meals or mortgage payments. She wrote ‘Budget Cuts’ and someone else said, “Are you nuts?!” and crossed it off, and told her ‘Tax Cuts’ is the party line, always.

Because if she stood there and told her adoring flock that Medicare is closed, and the Social Security checks aren’t coming, and the military retirement is cancelled, and so’s the mortgage deduction, they’d get damned grumpy. And if she told them that junior’s school would need to shut, and the playground is closed, and there’s no more unemployment insurance, all just so her new friends could have more tax cuts, and higher interest income from their bonds, well, they might come to their senses, and render her…well, just render her. You farm boys know what I mean.

This is the hand of the Republican Party, with a one-word change demonstrating the sleight-of-hand they pull on their followers every election.
(05:10:07pm)(0527:25pm)

Fetuses, soldiers, and Jews, oh my!

2010-09-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

(9:30:47 PM)
Fetuses, soldiers, and Jews: three things Republicans give lip service to. And nothing else.

1) Fetuses: name me a Republican policy ('tax cuts for the rich' and 'deregulation' don't count,) in the last twenty years that did anything to improve a kid's life. Pre-natal care? Headstart expansion? Post-natal healthcare? Improved pre-school access? Quality of air, water, food? Safety of Chinese toys? Prevention of melamine in Chinese baby formula, or lead in Mexican candy?
These fuckers aren't pro-life, they're Pro-Birth. Shout them down: "You're NOT Pro-Life, You're just Pro-Birth!"
Because, kid, according to them, while you're in there, the light of the world shines out your mom's va-jay-jay. (A term that graces this month's Cosmo cover!) Once you're out, though, you're on your own.

2) With few propects, financially, educationally, and now (thanks to 30 years of exporting our industrial base) job-wise, it's almost as if the GOP planned it all to force kids into military service. Voluntary conscription into soldier-hood. And boy, do Republicans sing their praises. Make up reasons to start wars, just to show them off. Hide tax breaks, ear-marks and pay-offs behind the need to service those soldiers. Well, at least until they come home. A blowed-up vet isn't much of a photo op. Reminds folks that it ain't all parades and polished boots. And if they're not much use to the GOP, well, they don't get shit. Walter Reed, the whole damned VA system got left to rot by thirty years of executive mismanagement followed by congressional neglect. Lousy pay, no jobs to come back to. And the evangelical Christians that make up 80% of the officer corps work hard to make sure most disability releases are short, cheap, and barely cover the costs of the rest of a soldier's life. What's being able to see worth to you? To walk? To sleep at night? Apparently, not much to the GOP.

3) And then there's the Jews. The last time you heard the phrase 'New York elite' come out of a politician's mouth or a pundit's radio show, was it a left-winger that used those code words for 'Jews'? Yea, didn't think so. I don't see many Southern Crosses flying over at Temple Beth Israel. Yet a significant percentage of American Jews are starting to vote Republican. Do they really think Democrats won't protect Israel? Do they actually think a party that is joined at the hip to both the racists of the Tea Party and the rabid Evangelicals of the 700 Club and Focus on the Family really has any use for them for a single second? Think reconciliation with the Palestinians is hard? Try squeezing the hatred and suspicion towards Jews out of the GOP and its fellow travelers.
"Well, once you're all home in Israel, (and the hell out of good white Christian America,) then the Jesus'll come back, and burn y'all up as part of the Rapture. Says so right there in Revelations. Oh, that's right. Y'all only read the Old Testament, don'tcha?"

I think John Belushi said it best in his signature on his head shots: "Wise Up!"
(9:54:46 PM)(10:06:03 PM)

Who the hell is on the cover of Sports Illustrated?!

2010-09-01T00:22:00.001-07:00

(11:38:05 PM)
Joey Votto is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. WTF?, you may ask, wondering either a.) Who the hell is Joey Votto?, or b.) I didn't know you paid any attention to anything besides politics. But Joey Votto is the first basemen for my long-ago-hometown baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds. Legendary in the '70's, almost unheard of since their 1990 'wire-to-wire' domination of all of baseball, 'my' team has been a joke since the mid-'90's.
Suddenly, as of this writing, they are 7 games ahead of the next team in their division. I have no illusions about their chances at getting to, much less winning the World Series, but I can dream.

I started paying attention to the Reds when I was five or six. My hero was Frank Robinson, but my favorite name on the team was Vada Pinson. I loved the way the name sounded, how it came off the tongue. "vay-DUH PIN-sun." It didn't hurt that he was great in the outfield and could really hit. I was already a true Reds fan by the time Pete Rose showed up. I would fall asleep listening to the games, looking at my baseball cards for pictures of each player as he batted.

Frank and Vada were black ball players. Not until years later did I learn that Vada Pinson had started out in the Negro Leagues, and had moved from the Black Barrons of Birmingham to my Reds. I didn't know there was a "Negro League." I just knew about 'baseball.' Pete Rose was, and is, about as white a specimen of homo sapiens as there will ever be. I didn't know that I should care. I just knew their stats, listened to the plays, heard them lose the first World Series I ever listened to. They were my team. They weren't black or white. They were Red.

I understand why Obama is so threatening to so many small people. Their children might grow up with a president on TV, in the web, in the news, that also happens to be black. Their children might not find that to be strange, or amazing, or scary. They might just think that's the way things are. They'll be learning new things every day, every week, about how the world is, at the age of six, seven, eight. They'll see black stars in movies, in video games, in music, in sports. Because they are there, everywhere they look. Even in industry, finance, politics, power.

And if that is allowed to seem normal, how will they be convinced that it is bad?

This year's incoming college freshman was born in 1992. She doesn't remember Clinton's presidency. She didn't watch his impeachment. FOX News is normal. And Nirvana is "classic rock." But a black president is amazing to her, because she's from what is already 'back then,' before there were presidents that were black. But eight-year-olds today? It is what it is. And where's my juice box?, they ask, unimpressed.

It's such a shame that they don't know the genius of Joe Morgan threatening to steal second, dancing miles off first, while George Foster, the home-run king, stood in the box, then stepped out, then stepped back in, the two of them completely destroying the pitcher's concentration, until Foster blasted another one over the fence, and both of them strolled across home plate, game after game.

Both of them were black. Both of them were brilliant, and were heroes, of mine and of thousands of little white boys across ever-so-Republican Ohio. I didn't know who Jackie Robinson was when I was a kid. I didn't care. I'd like to think that that was part of the point to Jackie Robinson coming to the majors.

Joey Votto, this week's SI cover, is a Canuck who can't (not doesn't, can't) play hockey. But he plays baseball well enough to be threatening to win the batting Triple Crown. It hasn't been done in my memory, since Frank Robinson won it (in the American League) in 1966. Remember he was black? Guess what? Nobody cared then, nobody cares now. What they care about is what he did. Cause in the end, it's what you do that matters. And they can't deny it.

Except on FOX.
(12:16:24 AM)(12:20:53 AM)

Remember when being 'all thumbs' was a BAD thing?

2010-08-30T08:49:00.001-07:00

(8:02 am)
Holy crap. I never thought a blank page combined with an obligation to write would present me with a problem. Anyone who knows me knows it's never stopped me from running my mouth. (BTW, there's a term for that: "logorrhea.") When writing an accepted assignment, whether for a class, or for some publication (usually political,) the subject material, and the point of it, has been obvious to me. Usually, the keyboard is my enemy just because I'm a lousy one-to-two finger typist, which is why I've always preferred speaking.

But one of the tenets of writing is "Write what you know." And I know I promised myself that I'd write, and post. So it's the act, not the content, that's the point of sitting here, between the gym and the shower, before going to work (yes, I have a regular job) and banging on this keyboard.

Let's talk about the keyboard, then. The standard terminology for this device is a 'QWERTY' keyboard, named for the six keys in the upper left half-a-row of letter keys. My mother is a past master (mistress?) of the keyboard, being a journalist. She could bang out 85+ words a minute on a mechanical Smith-Corona with hammers that swung up on arms from a central arc of hinge pins. Her earliest predecessors in the world of typing could type far faster. In fact, with a keyboard laid out in alphabetic order, in 3 or 4 rows, those early typists could go so fast that the weak metal available for the arms that hammered the type fonts onto the page would soon give up. The resulting tangle of bent metal, like undercooked spaghetti, confounded engineers. Then one came up with an idea: if we couldn't find a metal strong enough to withstand the use (and of course cheap enough to make typewriters profitable,) we could make the typists slower.

But how? Easy. Rearrange the keyboard so that, in an English-speaking population of 90% right-handed persons, the most frequently-used letters are on the rows away from 'home', under fingers that are the weakest, and usually on the left. The five most frequently-used letters in the English language are E,T,O,A and N. Look at them on your keyboard. The first two are on the upper, LEFT row, the last two are on the upper right or lower off-center. have to reach, using third or fourth fingers. And the A, the only one on the home row, is on the farthest left key, under the weakest finger.

Unfortunately, by the time this layout had become standardized across manufacturers, metallurgy had caught up with need. But it was too late. The intentional crippling of typed communication was permanent. The IBM Selectric made the arms obsolete, and the computer keyboard made the need for moving parts almost moot. (I still have a key that sticks on one of my laptops...)

iPhones and iPads rely on virtual keyboards on touchscreens, and still use this layout. Others have been invented, the Dvorak for one, that are designed to increase typing speed. All are far more functional that the QWERTY keyboard. But you've never seen any of them, have you?

Now, the keyboards on cell phones are so small that they can only be typed on with thumbs, because the rest of the hand is needed to hold the phone. An icebreaker I often use to interrupt people texting in the middle on parties or events is "Remember when being 'all thumbs' was a bad thing?" Yet even here, there are speed contests, and instead of rearranging the keyboard to be more useful, the language is instead rewritten to use fewer keystrokes, or phonic versions of words. BTW, it sux.

So, sometimes it's worth going back and re-examining the original idea, the contraints, and their results, rather than just continuing on.

An exercise for those interested: See those solid-rocket boosters on the side of the Space Shuttle's main booster? The ones that fall off about half-way to orbit. Why are they that diameter? Here's a hint: Roman chariots. I'm not kidding. Look it up.
(8:42 am)(8:49am)

9-11, Katrina, and my birthday

2010-08-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday. I'm 55. Weirdly, this birthday seems to matter, while most of the others haven't mattered, at least not since 31.
No, this isn't going to be middle-aged angst, but there is a bit of reflection due on these dates, and this one happens to have a syncronicity with the news, and recent history.
See, my 50th birthday, for which my wife held a surprise, and surprisingly fun party, got upstaged somewhat by Hurricane Katrina. I suppose for the rest of my life, I'll get to hear about that event on my birthday, like folks born on 9/11 or 11/23. Folks born on 8/8 or 8/9 got off easy this year, as no major news outlet commented on that event. Look it up.
Being a political activist, I remember the flooding of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina as the beginning of the end of the Junior Bush mystique. There on television, on every channel, was the incompetence of the omnipotent, unstoppable Republican machine. Just about a year later, the 1000-year Reich of One-Party Rule that Karl Rove had trumpeted came crashing down in the Democratic sweep of majorities in both houses of Congress.
In just a couple of weeks, we'll get the 9-11 remembrances. The other main inflection point in the arch of the Junior Administration. In all the recent polling on Obama's popularity, comparing his to that of other presidents at this point in their first terms. Missing in those analyses is that Junior Bush had the lowest incoming ratings of any president since they started polling. Well below 50%. 'Course, his did start by being appointed over the wishes of a majority of Americans. His actual popularity stayed in the toilet until 9-11. Suddenly, he could do no wrong. Suddenly, even my leftiest friends thought Junior was wonderful. My wife and I were in Europe on 9-11, so we missed the "all 9-11, all the time" media black-out/white-wash. (More about that on that date.)
But the similarity of the two events, 9-11 and Katrina, each just over eight months from Junior's two presidential inaugurations, and the effect they had on how America viewed him and his, strikes me. The first gave carte-blanche to a perceived incompetent, and the second exposed the incompetence and cronyism of an administration that had seemed capable of doing, or getting away with, anything.

One of the many lessons I draw from this is that old saw, "Success is being ready when luck comes around." The Republicans were ready, with legislation and policy initiatives, especially ones that had nothing to do with national defense or terrorism, and rode America's sympathy for the president to every one of their goals. These included the re-election of the Junior King, a dubious bet even after all this.

Four years later, constant organizing by the other political wing of America made it ready when Katrina hit. Hit not just New Orleans, but the entire Republican apparatus. Liberals, progressives and independents who'd either never drunk the FOX Kool-Aid or who'd snapped out of it after so many other things had already gone wrong saw an opening in the poll numbers, and ran the table in 2006. If the White House had been on offer in that cycle, they'd have taken that, too.

Since it fell on my birthday, I think a lot a bout Katrina, and New Orleans. I never went there before the levees collapsed. A conference we were supposed to attend ther in Nov of '05 got moved to some other city, naturally. I've been since. Seen the French Quarter. Seen the Ninth Ward. Sent money to various efforts there. I won't make any recommendations, because if you want to, you already have made donations, and will again. But Harry Shearer has a documentary in theatres tomorrow, The Big Uneasy, about how it wasn't Katrina that destroyed New Orleans, it was the poorly designed, badly built, and rarely maintained levee system that did the damage. Go see it.

Ray LaHood: WTF?

2010-02-24T11:19:00.000-08:00

Came in late on Sec of Trans Ray LaHood's House testimony. Lots of cordial laughter, apparently over how long he'd been there, and how many times he'd been asked the same questions. Why is it that humor for Republicans like LaHood always includes humiliation or death? What's there in Toyata's cars killing people and his party and department doing nothing about it to laugh about.

As for competence, the last questioner was Rep Jackie Speier of CA. She asked how many software engineers NHTSA has. This is a question that's been asked in several articles over that last few days. How tough would it have been for LaHood to find out before this hearing. Apparently, the over 200 computers under the hood of new every car sold these days are of no concern to mister LaHood, so he doesn't care how many people are on his staff who are competent to analyze them.

What is it with Republicans? They want the power, but not to do anything except keep it away from the other party.

Republicanism: Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

2010-02-23T10:49:00.000-08:00

Biology shows that homosexuality is genetic, or at least biological (is there a diff here?).
It is not a lifestyle choice. There is no such thing as a 'conversion' to or from homosexuality.
There is religious conversion, such as to Islam, or to Mormonism, or Scientology. These are psychological positions, and can be changed.
Racism and sexism are psychological also, and as such, can be changed.
As is a political point of view.

So I guess we can accurately view Republicanism as an unfortunate lifestyle choice.
Unfortunate for the holder, unfortunate for America, unfortunate for the world.

Hopefully, some day, instead of homosexuals, Republicanism will be subject to 'DADT.'
Because Republicans DO have a choice.

STUPID (sp?) Amendment

2009-11-08T13:17:00.000-08:00

On the upside of the STUPAK amendment, against any inclusion of pro-choice services in the healthcare bill, will be the death of the 'tort reform' (read 'repeal') movement.

This amendment, if it actually makes it to law, will become the lawsuit bonanza that the Christian right will use to grind most women's services in the US to a halt, through the active civil litigation to prove a 'not-one-federal-dollar' money trail for every instance of every one of those services.

In addition, I think Regents University (look it up) will start a new degree program in 'Forensic Accounting' with a minor in Women's Health Services, the better to harass all providers.

Science is where you find it...

2009-11-06T10:26:00.000-08:00

After Columbine, and again especially after the Virginia Tech horror show, a certain group of deep thinkers and social theoreticians posited the proposition that if everyone was trained in the use of arms, both handguns and rifles, AND if everyone was allowed to carry them, openly, then events such as Columbine and Virginia Tech wouldn't happen, or at least would be minimized in scope.

After the experiment that these scientists held yesterday in Texas, at Ft. Hood, can we pronounce that theory dead?

Tomorrow's Headlines

2009-11-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

Today, 'bat-shit crazy congresswoman' Michele Bachman led a contingent of DeMint teabaggers from the capitol steps into the halls of Congress. Arrests were made.

Today, Sen. Barbara Boxer told the Republicans to suck eggs, and called the vote for the Climate Bill in her committee, with no Republicans present. It passed, 10-1. (Typical Dems)

Today, the Dow gained 200+ poiunts, growing over two percent.

Today, President Obama (love the sound of that still) announced the endorsement of the healthcare bill from the AARP, and the AMA.

None of that will be the headline on your website or newspaper or radio news tomorrow.

It'll be the shootings at Ft Hood.

And on the sites that love 'bat-shit crazy congresswoman' Michele Bachman, it'll be emphasized that the shooter had a foreign, muslim-sounding name. Obama will be blamed.

I'll just remark that this is one of the worst days of Army casualties since the current wars were started. Fortunately, we don't lose 12 in one day very often.

Wherever you are, donate blood.
They need it.

Looking Back, Looking Forward.

2009-11-04T21:03:00.000-08:00

Perspective on a year without Republican Rule, and the 2010 Elections.

(This is a long one. It's the first day on the path to the next 'first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.')

One year ago, Obama became president-elect. Republicans for months have been pointing to the 2010 mid-terms and licking their chops, swearing a replay of 1994's Republican sweep of Congress. Yesterday, two states that went for Obama last year elected Republican governors to replace democratic ones. But a congressional district in upstate NY went Democratic for the first time since the Civil War.
What the hell's going on? Should Dems be worried?

Looking Back

1964 will always be remembered as the second-lowest point for Republicans in the 20th century. (The lowest, of course, was Hoover, the Great Depression, and the resulting 4 terms of FDR.) Goldwater, 'AuH2O', had built on the anger and paranoia of the McCarthyites and the John Birchers, and led them off an electoral cliff.

But by 1968, the Republicans had retaken the White hHouse. The death of the Republican Party was announced too soon. But this was the beginning of the end of the GOP as America had known it for a century. In Johnson's first term, from '64 to '68, Civil Rights, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security expansion, Voting Rights, all brought about an uprising among the racists of the south, who'd always voted Democratic. George Wallace became the candidate of the Dixiecrats until he was shot. The GOP saw the opportunity to throw in with the racists to expand their electoral base, and the 'Southern strategy' gave Nixon the bare electoral edge he needed to take the White House. But through it all, Democrats held both houses of Congress. Coalitions often were created across the aisle to work together on particular bills or initiatives. But Dems could take credit for the agenda, and its successful enactment.

From '69 to '74, Clean Air, Clean Water, the EPA, the banning of DDT, all came from the citizens, through this Democratic Congress. Democrats still held both houses of Congress.

By '74, by acting out the new populist GOP foundation of paranoia and hatred of others, Nixon's crew had committed crimes for which they had been indicted and disgraced. Nixon himself ran from the White House rather than face the impeachment charges that even old-school Republicans were supporting in the House and Senate. His apponted beard, Ford, served two years then was rolled out, replaced by Carter. Still the Dems held both Houses of Congress. Still they set the agenda.

1980 Reagan, 1988 Bush I, 1992 Clinton. With one two-year exception, in the Senate at the beginning of Reagan's first term, Democrats still held both houses of Congress. Iran-Contra, Bork, BCCI, Thomas, all these hearing were in front of Democratic Congressional chairmen.

By the time of the the 1994 sweep of both ends of the Capitol by Newt Gingrich's New Republicans, America had seen 40 years of almost solid Democratic Congressional policies and agendas. Blacks could vote. Women couldn't be kept in the kitchen. Air was becoming more breathable, the water drinkable again. America took these things for granted again, and gave no credit to anyone, instead assuming these were manna that fell from heaven. America had also by then heard over ten years of powerless Republicans telling it how much better it would be when the Republicans took over.
America took the chance. It voted for something new, something shiny, something Republican.

In 12 years, America saw exactly what a Republican Revolution would do in Congress. In the last six of those twelve, it how disastrous a lock-step, doctrinaire Republican monolith, owning all three branches of America's government, could be. When they finally had to walk the talk, Republicans were shown to America for hat they were: bait-and-switch hucksters out for nobody but themselves and their owners. Certainly not out for America. So in 2006, America turned them out of the capitol, and two years later, turned them out of the White House.

That's the look back.
Here's the Look Forward

The 2010 midterms aren't anything like the 1994 midterms. The Dems will have had the White House less than two years, Congress less than four. the Republicans will have been successfully crying 'wolf', sure, but also evidently playing sour grapes and stopping all legislative movement, with no agenda but "NO!"

Then the math of the midterms works against the Republicans too. Most of the Senate seats up for election are Republican, which means a lot of party money will be spent defending existing seats, not as much grabbing for new ones (more at a later date,) and 37 governorships up for election, more than in '94.

And with the demented DeMint Teabaggers working the primaries in 2010, expect a lot of hardline Republicans to find themselves suddenly painted as liberals and wimps as the only active part of the GOP pushes the rest of its body politic over the same cliff Goldwater ran his lemmings off 46 years earlier.

But the 2010 elections are doubly important, especially at the state level. because the governors elected in 2010 will be signing off on the redistricting maps that their states legislatures drwa based on the 2010 census. Those governors, as well as their state legislatures, will need to be Democrats to kept the Republicans at bay for enough time for America to heal from the hurt that 30 years of Republicans put on it.

For thirty years, the Republicans had the White House since 1981 (except for Clinton) or had Republicans running the Congress (since 1994, with criminal charges brought up on any Republican who consorted with Dems), with only one brief period, from 1993 to the end of 1995, when Democrats ran both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. And of course, Clinton crashed and burned on Health Care, while the Congressional Dems thought their 40-year reign would last for ever, so they didn't stand up for him.

So now the next elections start. We have to hold the seats we have. We ought to be able to take some more in the Senate, while holding a wide margin in the House. And we have to get Dems elected to state houses across the land, a prospect made more likely in the face of last night's several rejections of spending limits and tax repeals.

If Republican rule did anything for America, it's this: it reminded America that the way of the Republican is the path to disaster, and that when all the companies fail, America is all that's left. It's We The People, using our government to create the bootstraps we pull ourselves up with. Up from the hole the Republicans dug, and which, after we get ourselves out, we should bury the Republican in.
And with any luck, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the DeMint Teabaggers will help us do it.

Inherent Problems With Our Healthcare System

2009-06-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

There are two obvious flaws in the current health-care system in the United States.

First, through no fault of the individual companies, there is NO incentive for preventive care. Especially with ever-fewer 'cradle-to-grave' jobs out there, almost no one stays with the same provider for their whole life. So why would a company go to the expense of helping their customers stay healthy, insuring that the next insurance company collects premiums from healthy, and therefore profitable, customers, without making any preventive care investments of its own?

The second is definitely their fault: less payout means more profit. Not just by canceling policies or refusing coverage, but by making the process of receiving coverage so cumbersome to everyone involved. Imagine being as certain you were covered as you are that the premium will be automatically deducted from your paycheck, and that the paperwork were as easy.

At a minimum, these inherent flaws mean the current system cannot last, and as a functional portion of America's economy, has run its course.

Republicans, Iran, and North Korea

2009-06-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

Republicans are whining that Obama, already "with too much on his table", should start interfering with the Iranian elections.
And do what, exactly? "Bomb, bomb, bomb! Bomb, bomb Iran!", to quote John McCain? And that's from the guy they wanted to lead the country and the free world. Schmucks.

Iranians are in a place that North Koreans only dream of, where elections are actually held, and more than one candidate is on the ballot. Of course, Iranians were in a similar position only 30 years ago. And thirty years from now, North Korea may have learned from the ayatollahs' mistakes.

In the meantime, how will America respond if, as FOX News works to gin up the fear, N. Korea actually succeeded in exporting or, worst, detonating a nuclear bomb somewhere in the world? Some few hundred of the millions in North Korea would have been in any way responsible.

But we can be sure that the Republicans, and the 28% of Americans who still take them seriously, will be screaming for us to "Bomb, bomb, bomb! Bomb, bomb North Korea!" And kill thousands that hate their leader as much as those FOX viewers do, or perhaps don't even know anything about anything happening anywhere else in the world, and think their horror-show of day-to-day life is the norm around the world.

Open hand first, iron fist last.

Lesson 1: How NOT To Steal An Election

2009-06-21T09:24:00.001-07:00

Amateurs!
If the Supreme Leader had waited two days after the election, and then announced that the returns gave Ahmadinijad 52%, Mousavi 43% and the rest of the contenders 5%, the losers would have grumbled and complained, but that would have been it. A plausible finish after a plausible period for the count.

The Grand Council and the Supreme leader could still have just pulled the results out of their rectitudes, but they'd have been accepted.

Instead, they got over-eager, and announced a ridiculously wide margin of victory before even Allah could have counted all the ballots.

Any good American politician could have warned them off. And there are plenty of unemployed but successful campaign consultants who'd have been happy to help in the theft of a national election, to the detriment of the nation and the world.

Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell come to mind...

The Return of the Peacock Throne

2009-06-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

The reign of the CIA-installed Shah Reza Palahvi was one of violence-enforced adherence to the Shah's edicts, enforced by the Savak.

The Shah was overthrown by the youth of Iran rioting in the streets, overwhelming even the Iranian Army. Those students created a new, religious democracy, in their idealistic dream that religion would moderate the tendency towards dictatorship.

The Supreme Leader's actions f the past week have put the lie to those dreams, and while almost all the students in the streets this time are still Muslims, they have been taught, by the example of the dictatorship those earlier students now endorse, that this form of government doesn't work either.

Other than claiming his source of power from Allah instead of the CIA, there's little difference in the actions of the Supreme Leader, in his attempt to hold power.

The Shah's Peacock Throne, upon which the Supreme Leader now sits, may be replaced by the Green Revolt, or the Lipstick Revolution, but it will be replaced. More violence against the students will simply give more fodder to their cause, and less will be acquiescence to the revolution.

Either way, the legitimacy of the 30-year reign of rigid religious conservatism has run its course, and its lie is now seen not just outside the nation but within it as well.

Gosh. Sound like any other nation we know?

Health Insurance: The Easy Metric of Success

2009-06-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

There's a very simple metric for the success of the Democratic Party's follow-through on the mandate of Health Care Reform from the 2006/20008 landslides.

By the 2010 mid-term elections, is there anyone in America who is uninsured?

Because if there is, America lost, and the ReagaNaziCorporation (RNC) won, and we should vote the Dems out just to remind them of their responsibility to represent us.

Iran's Supreme Leader: "Suck Eggs!"

2009-06-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

No, he didn't say it in those words, but how else should his two hour's of "Nothing to see here. Move along" be taken?

On the one hand, he told all the marchers that marching in the streets is no way to solve anything, hoping the older Iranians won't remind the younger ones that that's how he and his pals overthrew the Shah and came to power.

Instead, his reminder was that the way to change things is by elections. Like the one they just had, where the results were announced before the ballots could be counted. By a margin that no one believes, on either side of the election.

Which leaves exactly what options for the citizens of Iran? Shut up, sit down, take what we dish out. And be glad we don't come in the night and take you away, Allah be praised.

How exactly is this different from the reign of the Shah?

How George HW Bush Almost Died...

2009-06-16T16:15:00.001-07:00

Not in that silly tandem skydive last Friday to celebrate his umpty-umpth birthday.
No, in the one on June 12, 2001.
And not by accident.

If Jeb hadn't stolen Florida for Dub-ya in 2001, removing Poppy would have become a preferable outcome to many of his associates to his continued breathing.

See, '41', or 'HW', or 'Poppy', whatever you want to call him, knows where most of the bodies in DC are buried. From his days as the head of the CIA, to his ambassadorship to China at the beginning of our great sell-out to them, and then of course disappearing in mid-campaign in 1980, to chat it up with Iranians about arms-for-hostages (and for a Reagan Presidency) at the hotel the Ayatollah had stayed at until he and his students took American hostages for 444 days. Then, there's all the fixes he was involved in while he was 'out of the loop' on the culmination of the Iran-Contra deals he'd started back in Paris off the campign trail.

No wonder he preemptively pardoned everyone in his Administration on the way out of town in January 1993.

At that point, he still had clout in the GOP, and especially in the boardrooms of the companies that'd benefitted from his policies for so long. And with Coors and Bradley and Scaife money keeping Clinton pinned down defending Arkansas from Ted Olsen and the Elves, no one in the White House had a chance to look over the records from the Reagan-Bush years.
After all, the real point of the Elves wasn't just to keep Clinton from moving forward, but also from looking back.

But Poppy's power and influence began to fade after 8 years. But the toxicity of the secrets he knew couldn't fade. His conspirators were still in office, still in boardrooms, and of course, the chance that the truth about Reagan's election, as well as about Iran-Contra, ever sullying the Great Prevaricator's legend, could not be tolerated.

So, in an act not just of holding power, but of self-preservation, Poppy maneuvered to get one of his boys (the two that don't have felony convictions) elected president, from either Texas (Dub-ya) or preferably Jeb in Florida.

Think how horribly wrong the seating of Gore would have been for Poppy, with Florida the electoral tie-breaker. Dub-ya becomes a political non-entity for at least eight years, maybe forever after his petulance at his loss makes the national papers. And the fact Jeb couldn't deliver his own state to his brother, his family, his party, would have ended his political future in the GOP right there.

The presidentcy of Al Gore, despised by all Republicans, and supported by a majority of the voters, would be laid squarely at the door of the Bush family.

Leaving no more favors to hand out, either from a former president or his two governor-sons.

And while his sons didn't know anything about Poppy's backroom dealings, Poppy would have needed to be taken out before he let anyone in on those goings-on, as some sort of life insurance.

Which is why I would have bought a ticket to that tandem jump in June 2001 if Dub-ya hadn't been coronated.

And which is why the Poppy fought so hard from the back room to get his boy coronated when he didn't win.
It was a matter of life and death.

Well, so much for GalaxyQuest.

2009-06-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

Friday was the end of analog video broadcasts in the United States. And while many nay-sayers are now taking great pleasure in pointing out the millions of Americans that no longer have any television service, who will speak for the aliens?

I will.

No, not the ever-present, lurking menace of illegal aliens, always the #1 problem on right-wing radio. No, I speak of the interstellar aliens, off-worlders who will, some day in about 26 years or so, suddenly find that all those re-runs of Lucy and Star Trek and The Simpsons suddenly have stopped.

Those transmissions traveled farther, faster, than any satellite carrying gold disks of sounds or naked pictures of our species. And they are now, or some years in the future, some light-years away, turned off, with less fanfare than any dying star.

Oh, well. At least they can still get broadcast radio: baseball, NPR and Rush Limbaugh.

And we wonder why they never communicate with us...

"Start Again!"

2009-06-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

This blog has been dormant for quite a while, as I was busy >ha!< during the last election.

Since then, I've been trying to decide whether to return here, or just leave it, another of the millions of blogs abandoned every year, for lack of diligence, for lack of something to say, or overtaken by newer technology.

So, as is evident from this post, I'm back. Here's why. The voices in my head won't shut-up.

There's the vociferous hater of Republicans, often the loudest and longest-winded(!). There's the tech geek, agog at what science discovers and engineers invent.
The comedian calls back to the humor of the past to inform the events in the news.
And then there's the analyst, always rolling problems and situations over and over, trying to find a new and better solution, or pry apart a system to find its flaw.

Eugene Volokh wrote once that a successful blog should stay focused on one subject, and that its postings should be relatively short.

I've considered having a blog for each of these voices, to prevent readers from having to wade through them to find the subjects they want.

But for simplicity's sake, I'll simply label the voices, and the reader can fallow the ones of interest to them...

But first, I am called to dinner. And 'cause my wife is a great cook, I'm never late for dinner.

Take Back America Conference: Day 2

2008-03-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

The morning plenary was Bob Borosage hosting a panel of Julian Bond, Jesse jackson & Taylor Branch discussing the legacy of King and the Civil Rights Movement. My sister, who's sofa is my hotel this week, wanted to hear about Donna Brazile, whom she blames for both the 20000 and 2004 debacles, but Julian Bond was a sub speaker. No show, no explanation. And s much as I like Jesse Jackson

I'm writing now from a session on the Rogue Presidency, including David Cole, a regular witness at the House JudiciaryComm, and John Conyers, House Judiciary Chair (who got hung up in traffic,) and Christ Hardin Smith, who blogs on constitutional matters for FireDogLake.
Christy Hardin Smith, FireDogLake:"Giving up our rights doesn't make us more safe, it just makes us less free"
John Conyers refers back to Gingrich's "Contract ON America" (the phrase I've been using since 1994, thank you)as the start of the current attitude of the Republicans toward the presidency. (I'd think it goes back at least to Nixon.) He's now remarking on his committee's report, "What Went Wrong In Ohio" about the 2004 election, and the invitation (and threat of subpoena) issued by the Committee to former Sec. o' State Blackwell, who was responsible for that disaster.

Conyers says he isn't hopeful about the rulings of the current Supreme Court, and that the most important thing between now and November is voting integrity.

More later..I want to listen.

Finishing Conyers' session

2008-03-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

Quick note: after spending some time trying to explain why there won't be an impeachment before the election (because "it would jeopardize the chance of a young, excellent man running for the White House") Conyers made two unusual statements. First, that there were already ample examples of crimes that Cheney ("the brains of the operation") and Bush had committed crimes they could be convicted for in both US criminal courts and in Int'l War Crimes tribunals, which could still end up with them being held responsible for their actions...
And second, that Conyers and several other members of Congress (no names mentioned) had sent Bush a letter saying that if he goes into Iran, he will be impeached.

Well, there's no hedging that statement...

The Obama Surge - a media product?

2008-01-09T15:09:00.000-08:00

(Been a while, but it's gonna be wild from here on out. Strap in)
Last night, Hillary Clinton beat Obama in New Hampshire. And everyone, especially the progressive wing of my party, is trying to figure out why Obama had to give a great concession speech last night, five days after getting to give a great victory speech after the Iowa caucuses (caucii?) And everyone is WAY over-analyzing the 'flip.'

I usually eschew (gesundheit) simple explanations for apparently complicated situations (and simple solutions to complicated problems.) But this one seems easy.

Until two weeks ago, no Republican candidate, no FOX pundit, and barely any other media face, spoke any Democratic candidates' name but 'Hillary.' In several Republican debates, they never even said 'Bush.' This feels like marching to the tune from Grover and Karl, too coordinated to be accidental.
WHY Hillary? Because they (GOP) calculate that America won't vote for a woman, even the Virgin mary, much less Hillary. So all focus was on her.

Imagine their wet dream come true, the hope they dared not hope at the RNC, when Obama won Iowa. And now, all focus is on Obama, win or lose in the primaries. WHY? because, in the mind of the GOP, the only thing easier to beat that a white woman is a black man.
They'll never even have to mention it, to place the race or gender card, (like Coulter calling Edwards a 'faggot.')becaue every time either of these candidates is seen, their 'difference' is evident to the GOP electorate.

I hate that America is still held hostage by the misogymistic racists whose parents committed treason back in the 1860's. Can't we let them out now? Other than Coca-cola and Cape Kennedy, they can all fall into the Gulf of Mexico...

Watch for Edwards v. McCain

Obama vs Edwards, speech-wise

2007-06-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm at Campaign For America's Future's annual "Take Back America" Conference. Three thousand progressives, several dozen sessions, on policy and the practical side of campaigning. And 'the candidates' are here.

Just got out of the pre-lunch session in the main ballroom, Obama followed by Edwards, each running about 30 minutes. I was a delegate to the California Dem Convention in April, and saw each of them, and all the others, there, also. But not back-to-back, not to the same craowd at almost the same time. I'm just ending a year as the president of my Toastmasters Club, and as such I do speeches or speaker evaulations several times each week. This was an experiment in style, and I tried to do a side-by-side comparison.

Obama and Edwards both have a populist style of speechifying. They tell heartwrenching stories and give absolutist pronouncements. They use the string-of-examples-in-the-same-format that develop rolling waves of applause and get the crowd on their feet. And their comfort levels,both with their material and with the crowd, are comparable, and a hge improvement over Junior's discomfort at stringing two sentences together.

But here's the most important difference I've seen so far. Obama is speaking to a crowd. Edwards is talking to each person individually. Obama is speechifying, Edwards is talking to me over the fence. Obama is sticking almost exactly to his speech, while Edwards veered off to 'today' twice, extempore. I only noticed about a one-percent diff from the April speeches in CA for either. But I felt like I was hearing Edwards for the first time, not the third, while I'd already heard Obama's speech.

Maybe this is good for Obama. He's still a new item, unlike Edwards, whom we all saw a lot of in 2004. So Obama's speech, its' 'Turn The Page' mantra sticking in people's heads, may work in his favor. He packed the largest ballroom at the Washington Hilton, literally overflowing into the foyer. Maybe 10-15% left when he did, rather than stay and hear Edwards. So there's an energy for Obama that Edwards may not have anymore. But hell, Obama may not have it either, by the time the primaries actually arrive...NEXT YEAR!

But Edwards got huge applause as often as Obama, and the two folks sitting net to me, sold on Obama at the end of his speech, were equally sold on Edwards at his finish, both repeating his take-away lines/concepts: "That's Not Who We Are!"/"We're Better Than This" after examples of Republican failings, and still-existing problems.

The GOP is envious. The Dems are suffering from a wealth of riches, candidate-wise. The GOP looks at their ten dwarves and weeps.

Hillary tomorrow, 8AM

Monica gets no immunity from the GOP

2007-05-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

Listening to Monica Goodling's immunized testimony today shows how far the Republican Party has fallen. Because even with immunity, she's living in 'I don't know'-land. And that's because there's no one left in the GOP to give her immunity from political retribution for telling the truth. If she actually tells the truth she'll never have another job. Rightfully, no Democratic-leaning operation would have her, and she'd be radioactive to any Republican-connected operation, especially after the abuse Tom DeLay's "K Street" project put them through. And there is no respectable, ethical faction left in the Republican Party, willing to accept the fact of the crimes of this Administration and others in the administration of the current Republican party.

It's a damning thing that the government's immunity can be trumped by the oath of Olmerta taken by members high and low in the criminal operation known as the GOP.

How and Why Regulations Are Born: An Evolution Lesson

2007-05-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

Republicans always whine about all these laws and regulations that keep them from being able to ignore everyone but themselves. The correct response is,"Because we tried it without those regulations, and you and your friends almost killed or bankrupted us, that's why." And because they didn't live through the world as it was before those regs, and because they have the imagination God gave a salt shaker, they don't get it.

So let's watch it happen all over again, in a whole new arena, for the same damned reasons it ever happens: greed, collusion and theft. I'm talking about the widening Student Loan Financing disaster. We relied on the ethics of the financial officers and boards of the universities. We relied on the integrity of the bankers. We were fools, again. They took our trust and literally laughed all the way to the bank, leaving teenagers, teenagers!! holding the bag. One is my youngest niece, who starts college this fall.

As always, add a pinch of Bush-Crony Incompetence. Jon Oberg, a high-ranking staff researcher at the Dept of Education reported on federal subsidies supporting loan-pushing collusion back in 2003 and recommended action to stop it. Two different Secs of Education, both Bush loyalists from Texas, told him, 'Go work on getting us some grant money. We have no power to change the situation.' Then add a dash of Congressional Oversight, when, in January, faced with a suddenly-Democratic Congress, the Dept of Education ended these subsidies...with a single letter to the lenders. And began an investigation.

This is the cycle that creates regulation: a small problem becomes larger, comes to the attention of experts, who warn the players, who ignore the warnings because 'it's not illegal, so the morality is irrelevant'. When it finally comes to the attention of the general public, first they rear back in horror, then they rise up in anger, and demand that the law match their sense of fairness.

This is one way Democrats are created.

Apocalypto Redux

2007-01-02T14:13:00.000-08:00

Sometime today, like an Aztec king sharpening the dagger he'll use to remove beating hearts from living subjects to appease the gods, Junior will announce the need for more sacrifice, in the name of burnishing his name.
He'll sacrifice our military, not just our soldiers.
He'll sacrifice our reputation, not just his.
He'll sacrifice our dreams, not his fantasy.
He'll sacrifice our future, because he has none.

This sacrifice will be made by the soldiers he sends to the slaughter.
This sacrifice will be made by their families, whose hearts will be ripped from them, in many cases forever.
This sacrifice will be made by their children, who will spend their lives and their childrens' lives paying for the privilege.

This sacrifice will not be made by the 'haves and have-mores' who are the king's base.
This sacrifice will not be made by American industry, which continues to build gas-guzzlers and video games, instead of electric vehicles and solar panels.
This sacrifice will not be made by you or me, who will find all the gas we want at the corner station.

What a relief that he told us to go shopping instead.
Got your Christmas gift cards?
Let's go!

Listen...in the distance...a funeral

2006-11-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

Listen. In the distance, the sound of a funeral march. But not the usual, brass-and-drums version played in New Orleans. No, this is The Washington Republican Dirge, played on shredding machines, with a whining choir. Security paper services, the ones that take away those rollaway bins lurking in the corner of every office in Washington, are working overtime, and hiring extra crews. Even the White House, especially over at Dick's office, has turned off the heat and cranked up the A/C to offset the heat the industrial-grade shredders are throwing off, as White House staffers, in shorts and shirtsleeves, throw ream after ream into the maws of those shredders. There are even a few, at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, that can grind almost anything into unrecognizeable pulp. Hard drives, CDs, thumbdrives, even framed photos of Abramoff, Cunningham, Ney, Hussein, even Rumsfeld, all the evidence goes into the hoppers, to become fuel for alternative-energy generators.

"In the meantime" now becomes a literal designator of the next sixty-some days, the official name of the last throes of this Republican Congress. And in this mean time, expect to see some of the ugliest behaviors, in service of ramming through the most extreme bills. Constitutional ban on abortion, make Bush's tax handouts permanent, more hand-off of legislative and constitutional powers to the executive, any an all are possible, even probable. And the floors of the House and Senate are going to make Hormel's rendering plants look pristine. Republicans are mean masters, and sorer losers, and they'll do everything they can to take their ball, OUR Constitution, home with them when they have to leave.

To any and all that can get near to these operations: Take picture, get copies, record conversations. Keep "contemporaneous journals," as both the FBI and IRS call them, because they can be used in evidence, even when the original evidence has been ground up, hauled away, and used for fuel or landfill.

Because America is doomed to let these fascists back in, if we don't learn exactly what they did, and hold them publicly accountable in such an extreme way that NO ONE will ever dare try steal America from its citizens again.

Treason is a hanging offense, and I wouldn't mind a few hangings. (Names available on request.)

ARVN, anyone?

2006-10-30T16:18:00.000-08:00

As more Republicans, in the electoral fights of their lives, find themselves facing the hard choices in Iraq, of either ramping up our manpower or 'redeploying' it, more and more of them are finding some refuge in the GOP line about training and supplying an Iraqi Army to replace our personnel there. As Junior puts it, so eloquently that you know someone wrote it for him, "As the Iraqi Army stands up, we'll stand down."
I've got a one-word answer to these weasel-words: ARVN. Army of the Republic of Viet Nam. Look it up. The parallels are so eerie, and obvious, that I'm amazed that no one's made this connection.

And as we continue to build the largest, most barricaded US Embassy in the history of the world, right there in downtown Baghdad, I remember a joke from National Lampoon, from that period that Junior avoided, both in service and in lessons.

What do you call 2500 people hanging from a helicopter?
Our orderly retreat from Viet Nam.

Iraq: Viet Nam Redux.

Mark, Laura, Denny and the Cardinal

2006-10-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

OK, everyone's weighed in on this Foley affair, some pretty despicably. What did you expect from Republicans?
The farthest-out was the plaintive squeal from ditto-heads that Ted Kennedy was still in office, killer that he was. God, they go for their last argument first. So boring. I'm not going to compare an single accident to a ten-year pattern of behavior, or 40 years ago to here and now. Naw. I'll drop my murder-bomb: why is Laura Bush still in the White House?
Granted, most of the gang-bangers Laura's supposed to be mentoring should be listening to her, but only because she's a killer, something most of them haven't gotten to...yet. Don't believe me? Look it up. Welcome to the reality-based world.
Moving on. Do Dennis Hastert and the Republican leadership in the House remind anyone else of Cardinal Mahoney, Cardinal Law and the rest of the American Catholic prelate? Pages, choir boys, what's the difference? Moving their priests and congressmen around, just to maintain their power and avoid scandals. Maybe this is that convergence of Protestant evangelists and the Catholic priesthood that the Republicans have been working on. Big Tent. Just don't look inside. "Deliver Us From Evil" is in theaters now. But does that title refer to the Catholic priesthood or the Republican Party?
Finally, the two Foley talking points Republicans seem to have settled into are the following:
One, "It's a vast, Soros-financed conspiracy...that we got caught with our pants down, masturbating while e-mailing, right before an election." Yet the left-wing can't get Soros to write a measly check to keep AirAmerica financed. Face it, the left ain't that well organized.
And two, "See, this is what homosexuality leads to: wanting sex with teenage boys." This is a personal favorite of the evangelical loonies of Dobson, Robertson and Falwell. They ignore that the same logic implies heterosexual Christianity leads to shooting 10-year-old Christian girls in their schoolrooms because otherwise the killer will want to molest them.
The scandal isn't that a Congressman was diddling teenage boys or girls (I'm waiting for that shoe to drop.) The scandal is that all evidence says that the Republicans have known, for YEARS, about this situation, and always relied on fear to deal with the problem. Fear of the congressman being outed. Fear of the pages being blackballed from politics for reporting this. Fear of the homosexuals in the RNC and the House leadership being accused of being pedophiles.
So Republican. "We have nothing to use but fear itself."

A newer mini-series at ABC

2006-09-07T12:24:00.000-07:00

A new mini-series is in production at ABC, based in part on a report of findings from Senate hearings into past Administration actions. The docu-drama also draws interviews with participants, news reports and books. Several Administration figures have written ABC to object to their portrayals, and to the fictional events that appear in the drama.
"People won't be able to tell where the truth stops and the lies start," complained Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, who is portrayed in one scene hanging up on a CIA agent who is complaining about contractors using water-boarding and electric shock on detainees at a secret CIA prison in Romania. Gonzales said further, "And at no time did President Bush say 'I don't care if they're dead after we get the info, as long as we get it!' "
VP Cheney has written an op-ed piece denouncing the portrayal of him making several phone calls to Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of his former company, Halliburton, assuring them they will get all the reconstruction contracts once the war in Iraq starts, and his ordering his Chief of Staff, in a meeting with Karl Rove, to shut down the CIA's monitoring program of Iran's nuclear effort by exposing an undercover CIA agent. "It's a two-fer," his character says in the mini-series' scene. "We discredit Wilson on Iraq's nuclear program, and we keep the CIA blind to Iran's. Hell, we can use the same Powerpoint slideshow again at the UN."
The mini-series, "Inside Bush's Secret Prisons" was written by one of Al Franken's close friends.
Hope Hartman, ABC spokesperson said that, as with another, similar series, this one will be broadcast without commercials, as a public service.
And no, she was not being ironic.

Five Years Later

2006-09-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

If you are against this invasion and/or occupation in Iraq, you have to vote Democratic in 2006. And you know why.
But if you believe every reason that George W Bush gave for us to invade and/or occupy Iraq, then you have to vote Democratic this year, too. Because if you believe we have to succeed in Iraq, whatever that means to you, you have to elect someone who will fight this war. Because every day this Administration is in charge of this war is one day closer to the day when we HAVE to leave Iraq because we CAN'T fight any more.
The Administration's idea of success isn't yours. Their idea of success is a location of continuing hazard and havoc, to use as a place to make money as mercenaries, on no-bid, no-oversight contracts. Their idea of success is to use a made-up war to keep you distracted from their theft of your job, your tax money, your health insurance, your pensions and your Social Security. Their idea of success is keeping you in line by questioning your patriotism while they make you work harder every day to make the same money you made last year.
And that's not your idea of success, is it?
If Iraq is the central front on the war on terror that threatens the entire civilized world, then we need to fight it like that. No new cars, so we can build thousands of Hummers and tanks, fighters and choppers. No deferments, for men or women, because we need a million people in regular uniform to take over the Middle East, rather than MBAs driving Beemers. No tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, the least patriotic of our citizens, profiting from this war twice each day, by paying less, and not sending their kids.
We need to add two hours to every flight boarding period, and half a day to the sched of every unloaded ship, so that no one can ship any WMD by air or sea. And we need to apply these rules to the private jets that avoid all this scrutiny.
We need to build and staff more emergency clinic facilities, to react to the injuries and diseases of a chem/bio/rad attack.
Not to mention bring our exhausted Guard back home, to rest, and then to protect the Homeland. We need to train more police, firemen and nurses to be the front line in this 'war of cultures' that is bound to last for tens of years.
Five years after, the clowns in this administration haven't done any of this. They can't win it over there, and they won't protect us over here.
And now they want to invade Iran? Haven't you had enough?

"There Must Be Consequences"

2006-08-31T17:53:00.000-07:00

Junior gave a speech today. He's angry that Iran won't roll over on his demand that they shut down their uranium enrichment program. Regardless of the ins and outs of that, which will be discussed ad infinitum, ad nauseum, from left and right, I want to remark on one phrase he used.
"...there must be consequences."
Why? What leads him to this conclusion? What experience in his life leads him to think that actions have consequences? Not his family's history. Certainly not his academic career or his avoidance of his military service. Not his business career. And he has paid no price for his absolute (and I use that word in its mathematical sense) failure in service to the nation and and its constitution.
What consequences have been delivered unto him? 'Consequences' is a word he uses to justify his petulant foot-stomping when he doesn't get his way. And until someone teaches him what the word actually means, it's meaningless coming from his mouth.
He wants to start a war, and he should say so, like he told his biographer in 1999, about Iraq.
This is why I want a Democratic House and/or Senate. Not to impeach this clown, at least not right away. First, I want two years of showing this guy the consequences of his absolute failure.
Then we impeach him between the 2008 election and the swearing in of the next President, just so his name always has that stain, that asterisk, that lumps him with Nixon and Clinton. That would be a bitter pill. A better one would be for the impeachment to conclude with conviction, and his ouster.
Like he says, "there must be consequences."

Olbermann Has Arrived

2006-08-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

Keith Olbermann, over at MSNBC, has been a comer for a while now. As he has snarked at the various mouthpieces for the Reaganazis, pronouncing 'Coulter-geist' or O'Reilly the "Worst...Person..In The WOOORLLD!", at least for that evening, his writing has become more pointed and (to mix geometric metaphors) more edgy. And his ratings have climbed.

Well, last night, he arrived. Taking more than five minutes to give as good as he thinks we got from Rumsfeld, Olbermann took not only Rummy but the whole Administration to the public square, and flogged them for the miserable little people they are, and for what they are doing to America. No pulled punches, but no name-calling, the preferred tactic of the little minds that are trying to justify their support of this Administration. Just excellent analysis, perspective, and rhetoric in the classic sense of that word.

His blow-off is a long quote from Edward R. Murrow, eerily appropriate to the current situation, though Murrow spoke the words in 1954, at the height of the Joe McCarthy's manipulation of the Red Scare. If he seeks to wear Murrow's shoes, that ghost would have permitted it, at least this once.

Without further ado, watch this. And welcome Keith Olbermann to the A-list or journalistic analysts.
A while in coming, but worth the wait.

Who has principles in Connecticut?

2006-08-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Who has fewer principles? Is it Joe Lieberman, for refusing the judgement of his party and of the people of Connecticut that he's supposed to represent? Or is it the Republican party, and more specifically the Republicans of Connecticut, who would rather vote for a man who disagreed 90% of the time with the president they elected? Well, they ARE Republicans, so what do you expect?
In this situation, the people with principle are the Democrats of Connecticut that voted based on the candidates' records and campaigns, not on the candidates' electability. Also principled are the Democratic Party leaders, who supported the incumbent in the primary, as they should, and now support their party's new choice for Connecticut. Because it's about preferences in the primaries, and about party in the general election.
And the win-at-any-cost, never-mind-the-ethics White House has decreed that the party's own candidate in Connecticut will get no money and no support from the RNC, the NRSC, or any other official party organ at the national level. As always, since they don't care about the law, they have even less care for ethics and principles.
So right now Joe's ahead, because all the Republicans are running to him, and he'll take all comers, and their money. Ned's behind for now, because the rest of the Democrats haven't come to grips yet with the fact that voting for Joe Lieberman will mean a vote for more Republican dictatorship, more Republican malfeasance, more Republican destruction from the Senate, because he'll vote with those that brung him, and that'll be Republicans.
Wake up, Connecticut.

"Macaca" - Welcome To The Real World of Virginia

2006-08-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

George Allen is a racist SOB! George Allen also happens to be the senator from Virginia. And his racism is, according to him, the real representation of Virginia. And he's right. Virginia is home to hundreds of thousands of racist bastards. You know how I know? Because they elected him! This is a guy who moved to Virginia from California because he knew they'd never elect him in California, not after driving around with a Confederate flag painted on his car. This is guy who keeps a noose in his office in Washington, to remind himself of the good old days. A guy who knows a nigger when he sees one, and would have been laughed out of that Virginia Republican meeting if he'd called S.R. Sidarth, a native Virginian born of Indian parents, a nigger. Because George Allen knows that this guy was a 'macaca,' actually spelled macaque in his mother's native Tuunisian French, at whose knee George learned his racist attitudes and the correct vocabulary to go with it. It's the name of a type of monkey, and it's been used for decades, in Africa and in white supremacist gangs here, to specify non-whites of Arab or Indian ancestry. And George Allen is a very discriminating racist!
Go check out '

So Much for "Adults In Charge"

2006-07-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what motivates me to write. I'm listening to Franken, interviewing Eugene Linden, author of the new book on climate change, The Winds Of Change. And he says ..."we caused it, and we can change it...". Yet the Republicans continue to deny it is happening, as well as refuse to acknowledge that anything can be done.

This is one more example of the refusal by Republicans to be held accountable. For anything!! And that's what gets me to finally write on this thread I noticed that runs through the behavior of all Republicans. By now, we've all heard the quote from Cheney that "the adults are back in charge," from his first days in the White House. But Republicans NEVER want to be held responsible. And the litany of "nobody could have foreseen"s, for the use of planes as missles on 9-11(Rice), for the cost and length of the Iraq insurgency(Cheney), for the collapse of the levees(Bush), is just the beginning.

Let's start at the White House. Do not hold them responsible for imprisonment or torture. No one has jurisdiction to tell the President what to do. The same with wiretapping and all the other invasions of privacy, from library reading lists to outing undercover CIA agents. The 'unitary executive' theory is just a fancy name for 'king,' and kings only answer to God. The examples are unending, from increasing air pollution and child poverty to decreasing real incomes and food quality, best epitomized by Bush's inability to think of any mistakes he'd made after more than 4 years in office. He was angry anyone had the gall to ask him a question. he certainly doesn't think he has to explain anything, to anyone.

How about Congress? Nope, not here. By letting the president have everything he wants, from tax cuts to a shiny new war every couple of years, without ever investigating any of the financial losses or policy changes that have come out of the White House, they have said "We don't want to do anything. Let them do it!" And by refusing to change any policies on how Congress operates, they demonstrate their refusal to be held responsible for their own actions. From dismissing and repacking the Ethics Committee until it wouldn't indict Tom Delay, to attempting to have a dinner honoring former Congressman Randy Cunningham, who was unable to attend because he's doing 100 months in federal prison for bribery and ethics violations, Congress refuses to change at all, even as the Abramoff scandal continues to send Congressional staffers to prison and require ever-more members, ALL REPUBLICANS, to put criminal defense attorneys on retainer, using campaign funds to do it.

Of course, the judiciary is an exception. Oh, yea? Read the Supreme Court's first decision of the Bush era, the one that selected him for high office. A more unsavory bit of torture was not committed until Guantanamo, a year later. And the Court knew it. Why else would the decision also say, essentially, "You can't hold us responsible for this, so we refuse to allow this decision to be used as a precedent. This is a one-time deal!" That precedent of not being willing to be responsible for the reality of their decisions especially informs the knackered pencil shavings of Scalia and Thomas to this day.

And what of the heavily-moneyed group of industrialists and theocrats that fund this continuous error in judgement? The whole POINT for them is to never be held responsible. Corporatists like Olin, Scaife, Allen-Bradley and Coors all want nothing more than to go back to when their money began, back to the turn of the last century (all of these boys having inherited their wealth.) That was when nobody could tell them who they could hire, how much they should pay, how long they could work their employees, or in what kinds of conditions. No one could hold them responsible for the cyanide and mercury they dumped in the water or the lead they burned into the air, or for the lies that passed for lists of ingredients, if they put a list on the label at all.

Theocrats want the government's money, but don't want to have to tell how they spend it, or if it does any good. And that's why George W Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. In a later stage of government-based theocratic enforcement, it'll be the new FBI. It's already got the initials. For now, it's why they work so hard to undermine science. It requires review and accountability, both anathema to the religious right.

And finally, we come to the folks that elect these politicians, who worship these theocrats, who dream of being one of the 1/2 of 1% of America that runs the corporations. And they don't want to know. They don't want to see the disasters these policies have caused. They don't want to invesitgate the collusion, the money-laundering, the bribery, the sheer theft. They don't want to worry about the economics or the health of the world they're leaving their children. So sooner or later, you get one of two bottom lines from them. Either it's Clinton's fault, or it won't matter when the Rapture takes them.

The worst thing about this attitude of non-responsibility is that it is based on a fear of failure. And fear always leads to anger, directed first at the thing that did the scaring. And the scariest thing to a person like this is someone else who knows this person failed. So Bush lashes out when asked about mistakes. Cheney belittles anyone who questions. Rush refuses to admit he committed a crime, while O'Reilly buys the silence (and the phone-sex tapes) of the staffer he sexually harrased.

Ultimately, the only resolution would be to have no one left that pointed out the failures. So, first, no Democrats are Americans, so their opinions don't count. Then, per Ann Coulter, Liberals, including all Democrats, should be killed. Only Republicans will be left, scared to death they'll be next. But since the failures will continue, someone must be to blame. And since it can't be those who actually failed, another group to blame will be found, and killed.

This will continue to one of two ends. Either some contingent finally wakes up to reality, and overthrows the failure-prone leadership AND its philosophy, or it ends with two people at each others' throats over who was responsible for that last failure. And no matter who wins that fight, they'll be wrong.

But the 'winner' will never admit it.

Two slogans and some math...

2006-07-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

Well, the Muddled East continues to entertain...
1) "The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" - someone far wiser than I.
2) "A Theocracy Is NOT A Democracy Is NOT A Theocracy Is NOT A Democracy..."ad infinitum - A major facet of the problem of Israel.

At the same time these two seemingly-neverending characteristics of the current situation play themselves out in a delightful new variant, Junior and his strange bedfellow, Condi, demonstrate how completely clueless they both are. Condoleezza literally spoke for 10 minutes without constructing a declarative sentence that had semantic content. Listen to her. Students of semantics are impressed, but none others.

And now, the math. Solve this series of simultaneous equations:

Is > P + S + L + J + In + Iq + SA
P > Is
S > Is
L > Is
J > Is
In > Is
Iq > Is
SA > Is

This is the military balance-of-power problem of the Middle East, defining the perceived military needs of each player, where Is = Israel, P = Palestine, S = Syria, L = Lebanon, J = Jordan, In = Iran, Iq = Iraq, SA = Saudi Arabia...

The situation is one of perception, leaving sheer religious and racial hatreds out of it (yea! right!)

Israel sees a pan-Arab enemy, and so must have more arms than all Arab countries combined. Meanwhile each internationally-recognized shiekdom (Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia) as well as each of the other nations, who all see themselves as sovereign, free-standing nations, contending with the others as well as with Israel, must have more arms than Israel.

The joke is that the non-governmental Islamic organizations, Hamas in Palestine (Sunni), Hezbollah in south Lebanon(Shi'ite), and the Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt and Pakistan, ARE creating a pan-Arabic movement. Using the hatred of Israel, and its biggest supporter, US, to organize and motivate followers to overthrown their national governments, the rise of a pan-Islamic federation is happening before our eyes, and without a whimper from the Junior Administration. Hamas was elected in Palestine, Shi'ite mullahs run Iran, and we have not a civil war but a religious war happening in Iraq. Now Hezbollah has dragged the nation of Lebanon into supporting its fight against Israel.

Two last thoughts on Junior's press conference...

2006-07-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

1) The story of the disbanding of the CIA unit that searches for Osama is "not true."
[from the NYTimes transcript today]
PRESIDENT BUSH: I -- you know, it's just an incorrect story. I mean, we got a -- we're -- we got a lot of assets looking for Osama bin Laden. So whatever you want to read in that story, it's just not true, period.

2) The transcript doesn't let you hear how Junior's exasperation at the 'hard work' of answering questions allows him to slowly work himself into a high dudgeon at the end of the press conference, so that he is literally gritting his teeth when he says "I've enjoyed it. Appreciate it."

Is this just his usual disgust with having his policies questioned, or if it's a sign that his anti-psychotic meds need adjusting?

Still Listening to Bozo

2006-07-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

During this press conference, he has touted diplomacy, that it takes time, and that we have to do things with partners, not alone. Who says he can't learn new talking points?

About 45 minutes into it, a gal busts him on the failures of his North Korea policy, and asks why stick with a policy that's failed. And he literally repeats all his talking points on North Korea, the same ones he'd used in his speech and in answering a previous question. Literally verbatim.

It's awe-inspiring to see someone so uninterested in participating in doing the work his job demands. (As I type, he has just stormed off angrily, saying 'I've enjoyed it!' through actually-clenched teeth.) This guy has been coached to the nth degree, and sticks to his talking points.

There's 'on message' and then there's 'automaton.' This man isn't just a white-knuckle drunk, he's a white-knuckle speaker, gripping his talking points and agenda and never letting go, no matter what the facts, no matter what the question...

Dear Lord, how much longer must we suffer in this desert that is the Junior Bush intelligence vacuum?

It's "hard work" listening to this clown's press conference

2006-07-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

Junior is still interrupting all the summer school trips to the Museum Of Science and Industry in Chicago. He just made his "You look like you're over 65" joke to the first member of the press corps. As always, an inslt treated as a joke. Typical 3rd-tier frat boy humor...

And he has reminded us, at least a dozen times, that "it's hard work", whether in reconciling the House and Senate Immigration bills, or fighting the "war on terror," or creating jobs...

First, I don't think I ever heard Clinton talk about how hard the job was, which may have been one of the reasons why he made it look so easy.

Second, whenever Junior says it, it comes out as a whine. "Y'know, I mean, it's haaaarrd wooorrk!" I can't stand having this whiner as our leader. No wonder we get no respect.

And third, WE all know being president is a tough job, WTF did he expect? Oh, yea! This is the first job he's ever had where he actually had to show up every day, where Daddy's money and his connections couldn't bail Junior out. Where he at least had to look like he was paying attention. No wonder he's so incredibly bad at the job. Even the "Governor Of Texas" gig was easy, because that governor's job is to be a figurehead (read their state constitution), and his legislature only met for 90 days every other year! No wonder the family ran him for that job.

Man, it'll be hard work digging America out of the pile of shit this guy has dropped on us...Post-Republican America will be a turdblossom, or just a turd. Either way, it'll be hard work...

Happy Birthday, Mr. Pres-i-dent...

2006-07-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

Marilyn sang for Jack Kennedy's birthday in a sheer, skin-tight dress that she had to be sewn into. The only thing that kept it legal was the splash of sequins across the front...

Dick Cheney may have worried, in some fever-dream, that Kenny-Boy would sing for Junior, in some orange jumpsuit that he was shackled into....

But Kenny-Boy gave Junior a MUCH better gift for his birthday.

Boy, Dick might think about giving something similar to America on its birthday next year. I'm sure America would appreciate it even more than Junior appreciated his gift...

Happy Birthday, Junior!

Give me your poor, your tired...

2006-07-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

Tuesday I celebrated America's Independence doing the same thing as many American men: yard work.

Differently from most, as I worked, I listened to 'The World' on NPR, as they played two articles that explored the naturalization of immigrants, many of whom became citizens yesterday across America.

The first story interviewed several long-time immigrant workers, one a mechanic of 22 years, one a housekeeper for eight years. Both still live in the deep south of the Southwest, both were originally illegal, both still speaking in their native Spanish. Both are now determined to become citizens, to protect themselves from the animosity towards illegals in the current debate.

The second story was of a woman, now 22 and graduating from college, who came to the US five
years ago from the Sudan as a sanctioned refugee. She settled with a host family, was given legal status from the US and funding the refugee agency, and was prepping for her naturalization ceremony yesterday. Her entire interview was in perfect, lightly accented American English.

From two stories, a choice of lessons: If even a refugee girl can learn English and join
American culture, then those illegal immigrants that haven't learned English must not really want to be Americans, and don't really even want to try.

Or: Keeping people illegal keeps them out of the mainstream of America, keeps them segregated, huddled with others in their situation, and prevents them from ever reaching their economic potential here, even while they exceed their economic potential in the country they came from.

It seems like a choice between America's hopes and its fears.
Pick one.

Global War On Dick Kickin' !

2006-06-28T18:17:00.000-07:00

It's impossible to express my disgust with the phrase 'war on terror' and the resulting 'We're in a time of war' excuse for every trampling of the Constitution by this Administration and its rubber-stamp Congress, most recently in the chest-thumping and threats surrounding the NYTimes exposure of the White House spying on American citizens, without warrants, voiding at least two constitutional amendments.
So...
1) Please tell me when Terror did not exist in the world. Tell me how we will know when there will not be any more.
2) Since you can't do #1, how's about defining how we will know when we have won the 'war on terror,' so we can go back to reading the Constitution the way it was intended, and stop using it as a door mat at the entrance to the White House.
3) Can't do that either, eh? Then let's declare a similar war, also against a methodology rather than a state or an army.
I propose a Global War on Groin Hits. Anyone who thinks about hitting someone else in the groin should be jailed and tortured, possibly with groin hits. Anyone who thinks someone is thinking about hitting them in the groin has the right to spy on that person, go through their phone calls and bank accounts, to protect their 'family jewels.'
Silly, isn't it? This has always gone on, and will, as long as there are testicles hanging from people who are thought to deserve a good whacking by anyone else.
The difference is, of course, that a groin hit rarely kills the victim, while we've seen terror attacks kill people for hundreds of years, including the WTC attack of 2001.
But the analogy equates a person to a nation, in case you didn't notice. And the WTC attack didn't particularly hurt America as a whole. The economy continues, the political system continues. Trucks navigate roads, children go to school.
But America has changed its behavior towards its citizens, and towards the world. In both cases, for the worse. And in that sense, the terror attack worked, not because of the attack, but because of what we let our government do to us and to our nation, using that attack as an excuse.
The list of what they are doing to us is already long, and sad. And oh, so pointless. Think of what we'll find when the constitutionally-required openness in government and the constitutionally-designed checks-and-balances kick in!
There will be no end to the war on terror, because there is no army to conquer, no enemy to star in a surrender ceremony. But there will be an end to America. And that is when we decide that the idea and establishment of the principles of the Constitution is no longer important.
Because the war is actually one of ideas. And how we continue to treat our citizens and our nation and our international friends and treaties will tell who wins this battle. And we come closer to losing every day that we treat our citizens more like we accuse 'them' of treating people, rather than convincing people they wanted to be treated more like we expect to be under our Constitution.

2006-06-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

I'm back...and feel like I've been through finals and a dissertation proposal defense...neither of which is likely to happen soon, but two weeks of business travel and family guests results in the same effect.
So, before I get back in gear, a quick rundown of the absence:
Three days in Manhattan, seeing The Daily Show, Billy Connolly, and Spamalot. The throat's still raw from laughing, and barely held together in the subsequent three days of policy at the Take Back America conference in Washington from the 12th to the 14th. I reported on the conference for a local AM AirAmerica affiliate's Sunday show, hosted by Barry Gordon. From the opening day, with Robert Redford, through the Hillary/Pelosi/Kerry breakfast the next day, and seeing Russ Feingold, Joe Wilson and Ned Lamont talk Iraq on Wednesday, it was a helluva show. I was interviewed on Father's Day on the BarryGordonFromLeftField Show, while my dad, my favorite Democrat, listened. You can hear the interview here. I'm the first guest, so you only have to suffer the ads. It's AM radio, after all.
Back home, to attend the oldest niece's HS graduation, then enjoy a few days of parents staying with me, including a night for Mom at the local hospital. Note: never test-drive a seafood restaurant with visitors...
All caught up? Look, everyone is focusing on Iraq. The conference was damned near a one-note concert in the full sessions, and only got to other subjects in little break-outs of 100 to 200 people. The best post I've read lately is from the RudePundit, here. So in the interest of change, as well as speed, I'm going to reprise a complaint from this time last year: Have you looked at the Dow Jones Industrial Average today? It's at 11079, after a 104-point rise today. "So what?", you ask, "That's a nice one-day jump." Yea, until you get some context. Remember when Junior wanted to privatize Social Security. Wanted us to do our own investing, to hand our funds over to some brokerage house to manage, (and get a fee for doing so,) even if we kept the funds in something as 'safe' as an index fund, like, maybe, a DJIA Index fund (called Diamonds in the vernacular) for example?
Well, 10218 is stuck in my head. It was the market close of the DJIA on a day in June of 2004, when I drove 12 hours straight through from home to Salt Lake City, to get a car back from a shop that had resusitated it from the ministrations of a drunken Mormon who'd rear-ended it, and me in it, about two months earlier. 10218 was on the air as I got a speeding ticket, because they ticket their own (my SLC rental had Beehive State plates) but not tourists...
Anyway, do the math. Two years, 861 points since 10218. That's a total of 8.4% increase over two years. It would be much less if your broker took his 1.25 percent the first year, which you then wouldn't earn on the second year. After which, the broker takes his 1.25 percent again. So maybe you made 5% over those two years, sitting still and betting on the Dow. You'd have made the same increase, maybe even a tad more, over the same two years if you'd still been in the standard Social Security system. And that's using Junior's own figures. But the important thing, for Junior and his corporate backers, is that 1.25 percent per year they'd make off your money if Social Security was privatized. Because they don't get any of that now. That gets used to pay for your parents, my berieved underage nieces, and the rest of the widows and orphans that expect civility and care from us, and that we, purporting to be civilized, give them through Social Security.
I compare every day's close to that June 2004 close at 10218. And I watch the fascists in the Reaganazi Party, because they won't sleep until they get their hands on that big pool of money called Social Security. 'Cause 1.25% of all the Social Security funds, every year, is...well, it's a whole lot!

I can dream, can't I ??

2006-05-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

OK, so Skilling and Lay got the first taste of the rest of the life we having been wishing for them since 2001. Probably a pyrrhic victory for America. I mean, we'll NEVER see the money they made disappear, and if their lawyers are really good, they'll be able to stay out of prison until January of 2009, at which time Junior will pardon them both. He needs to make sure that they won't rat him out over Cheney's Energy meetings and the other collusions amongst the oil men in and out of the White House. After all, the one person Junior can't pardon is.....Junior!
Instead of continuing to rain on your parade, allow me to suggest that 'going away' presents would be in order for 'Kenny Boy' Lay. And being a good liberal, wanting the best for my fellow man, let me suggest the following:
Send along an order of condoms (my favorite brand) and some single-use packets of KY (also makes those gas prices easier to take) to Kenny Lay, in care of his legal representative, Danny Petrocelli, at O'Melveny & Myers, in Century City (aka LawyerLand) in LA.
I'm sure he'll be able to pass these gifts along to Ken.
After all, lawyers have a better chance of delivering to the prisoners than the rest of us. It's their job!

For the irony-deficient conservatives...

2006-05-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

"There is nothing wrong with holding an opinion and holding it passionately. But at those times you're absolutely sure that you are right, go find somebody who disagrees. Don't allow yourself the easy course of the constant 'Amen' to everything you say."
- Condi Rice, 5/22/06, Boston College commencement address

Obviously, she never gave this advice to her boss, because she's still Sec. o' State.

And is that how the cabinet members reply to the utterances of the anointed one? 'Amen'? Do they also genuflect when they enter, or when they exit, or both? And must the eyes be averted?
Just wondering...

Competence By Design

2006-05-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

New York holds seemingly never-ending design contests (and legal battles) over how to memorialize those lost there on Sept. 11th, and how tall the new target, er, office building should be. Sen Jeff Sessions has weighed in on a preliminary, three-barrier design for the new fence at the Mexican border, and bidding has been opened to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, so no one will be suspicious when Halliburton gets the primary contract. And yet, if you Google "New Orleans Levees Design Contest" in the news, you get nothing. And THAT's how seriously this nation is taking the idea of bringing back New Orleans.

We've all seen that snarky, but oh-so-telling email that's gone around, the one with the photos of the Thames barrier in England, the mid-ocean barrier that protects the Netherlands, and the new one (after a huge design contest) to protect Venice Italy from sinking, all very high-tech, demonstrating serious, nation-level investment, followed by the weed-covered dirt piles and collapsed concrete panels that were supposed to protect New Orleans.

So, now that Naigin's been re-elected, and the Republicans can't withhold support anymore just to try to swing an election, I think the mayor should announce a design contest. And just shame the damned Army Corps, and the whole Republican Monarchy, by demonstrating that the job CAN be done, as long as it's taken seriously, and done competently, neither of which is possible under the Republican theory of government.

Mary Cheney really tics me off

2006-05-16T14:47:00.000-07:00

Mary Cheney really tics me off. She's got a book out, explaining why....why...why her parents could use her sexual orientation to win votes among the Log Cabin Republicans, but she's pissed off that Kerry used it to point up the hypocrisy of her parents, her party, her campaign, HER, in supporting the BushCheney '04 campaign against gays! She doesn't think people (gays) should be one-issue voters, but her Party's whole campaign is to create a union of one-issue voters, whether they're anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, or anti-gay marriage.

One of the little conflicts I'd like her to address is that homo-haters, this administration's supporters, claim homosexuality is either a choice or the failing of the parents. Of course, no one would choose to be treated the way gays are in America, so it must be bad parenting. So which convicted drunk driver is the failing parent here, Dick or Lynne? These two paragons of the Party of Family Values! (I won't even mention those other fine parents, George and Laura.)

The fact is that most evidence says homosexuality is genetic. So which side of the family did it come down to arrive at Mary? Since her older sister's conception date was exactly 2 days after the military lifted the ban on drafting married but childless men, Dick's fifth(!) deferment seems to demonstrate that neither Dick nor Lynne was particularly interested in parenting, just in staying out of Nam (him) and keeping him in better paying jobs (her.)
The answer may lie in Lynne Cheney's "Sisters", a fine novel of women on the American plains.

I'm just saying...

Give the NSA something to track

2006-05-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

At the NSA.gov site, there are lots of phone numbers you can call, where you can get lots of information.

My high school English teacher always said 'Go to the original sources.'
Why not give them a call about the program? That's the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program,' you little old American (=terrorist?) you!

Surprise! I'm AGAINST Impeachment !

2006-05-09T14:30:00.000-07:00

All these angry people, buzzing about, 'Impeach! Impeach!'
Don't they see what has happened in America? Don't they see how it has happened?
Don't they understand that Junior is just the hood ornament, the cherry on top, the symptom of the disease?
And if they insist, immediately, on the passion play of 'The Impeachment of George Walker Bush,' that no one will have any stomach for the REAL investigations into the real crime, that of one-party rule, collusion among the three branches of government, collusion between the government, the ReagaNaziCorporation (RNC) and corporate America! And with Republicans running a rear-guard action that these additional investigations are just retribution fro Dems being out of power for so long, they'll look like the underdogs.
If they really believe that removing the hood ornament means anything other than that the car goes into the shop for a few days, they're wrong.
I want to put the Republican machine in that car cruncher that OddJob used in Goldfinger. I want every participant as the guy in the trunk of that car when it went into the compactor....

And then I want to put the hood ornament on my mantle as a trophy. Like Franken says, do a quickie impeachment between Election Day '08 and Jan 20 '09, just to show the world the disdain we hold for this petty tyrant.
...and then cancel his Secret Service detail, just for grins....

It depends on what 'Accomplished' accomplished

2006-05-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

During the 'celebrations' earlier this week, of the third anniversary of Junior's landing(?) on the carrier, and of 'Mission Accomplished,' I realized two things:

First, 'Mission Accomplished' was exactly 6 weeks after the start of the invasion. You know, as in "it'll take six days, six weeks...I doubt six months." So this is a celebration not only of their lack of planning for the war, but of their pre-planning for the photo-op. Boy, was Colbert right!

And second, I figured out why Junior's bulge was so large.
Before you think I'm overly-focused on Junior's package, realize that most Fox commentators spent that day remarking on it (listen to Stephanie Miller's podcast of April 28, 2006, reading the transcripts. They're hysterical!) My dad, a WWII Air Force bomber pilot, had duty in England, including teaching flying, and being trained on how to land on a carrier. The Navy then had an unofficial 'Order of the Diaper' for each new initiate into the sheer terror of letting someone else, the flagman on the deck, tell you how to land your plane on a short, pitching airfield in the middle of the ocean.

If you stage a massive, internationally-televised photo op, you don't want your star refusing his big entrance 'cause he's wet himself, do you?! What's your insurance policy?

Can you say 'Depends?'

Just What America Needed !

2006-04-27T00:36:00.000-07:00

Two quick thoughts, and then off for a well-deserved trip with my honey...

1) They picked Tony Snow because he was dirty from the Sr. Bush Administration. Much has been made of the impossibility of bringing truly fresh (read 'innocent') talent into the Whore House, so haing them use the same old staffing technique, 'Load up from Dad's Administration,' shouldn't have been a surprise. What it DOES confirm is that FOX News is the same as Hudson, Manhattan, American Enterprise, or any of the other 'Institutes' that the ReagaNazis park themselves in when they're out of power...Not just a cheerleader, but an official part of the Party.

2) America needed Bush the Junior. Really!

And while I'm gone, I'm going to put together a justification for that statement that is already several pages long in my head...

A quick thought on the recent shuffle at the White House: BFD!

2006-04-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

The two items of real note are as follows:
1) Whether Andy Card jumped or was pushed (I vote 'jumped' as the poor bastard's looked exhausted for months,) he's been working a billion hours a day with no deputy, for almost two years. Karl's been drawing the 'deputy' paycheck, but if you think Karl Rove ever gave Andy the time of day, you're smokin' stuff. So with Bolten coming in to fill Andy's shoes, Bolten needs help or he'll never get up to speed. So they gave him back the 'deputy' slot to fill with a helper. This changes NOTHING at Karl Rove's desk, as getting the Deputy title just gave him 'policy' cover. But, as The Prince Of Aluminum, Sec. O'Neill, called them, the "Machiavellis of Mayberry" never care about policy except as a funtion of politics, and that's ALL Karl cares about.

2) McClellan says it'll be a two or three-week transition to a new 'spokes-hole', but only a moron throws out the old without an idea of who to replace him with. Oh, yea, THAT moron. I forgot...

Y'know, it's tough to find rats who want to jump ONTO a sinking ship, especially when the rats that are already onboard won't trust them to not take one look around the wreckage and flee to the nearest press office to 'rat' them out. (pardon the pun) Especially if there would have to be congressional confirmation hearings, where the incompetence of the outgoing rat, and the shit-pile he or she (can't forget 'Leezza) left behind, could be fully inspected and remarked on by senators in public. God Forbid!

They throw like they make war: Badly.

2006-04-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

Thank God baseball season has started. I'm a Cincy fan, and THAT's why I like red, and why I HATE that the Reaganazis have stolen my favorite color, my team's color!! Blue is for Dodger weiners...
And what the hell does all this have to do with politics? Well, Junior threw out the first pitch in Cincinnati last week, at the 'Great American Ballpark.' He was invited to do so by the Reds' current owner, who was a co-owner of the Texas Rangers with Junior. He's one of the guys who overpaid Junior in the buy-out of his piece of the partnership. Anyway, the local Republicans cheered him on, his pitch went wild above the plate, but the amazin' Jason LaRue brought it in and saved face for Junior, just like the troops are trying to do in Iraq.
And the home team, MY team, paid the price for showing him off, and covering his mistake.

Reds lost 16-7 !!!

Yesterday, 'Big' Dick Cheney threw out the first pitch at RFK in Washington for the first home game for the Nationals. He was booed from the moment he set foot on the field to the moment he walked off. The booing will be his excuse for pitching from half-way to the mound, and still bouncing it in the dirt in front of the plate. The fact is, he's a wimp and (pardon my insensitivity) I've known 10-year-old girls who throw better. FOX killed the mike during their live feed for the pitch, because they can't take reality.

Nationals lost!!

So, a little hint. Don't let losers lead your team, or your team loses!! QED

My next bumper sticker

2006-04-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

IF YOU BELIEVE BUSH,
YOU BELIEVED O.J.

Greenbacks, wetbacks, yellowbacks

2006-04-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

Seen the new ten-dollar bill? Looks like a piece of newspaper that got left on the dashboard cooking in the sun all day, all piss-yellow except for the oval in the back. Well, you got a yellow president, what do you expect? It'd look better with Junior's picture on the front, instead of some Jamaican (look it up.) At least then, the yellow streak on the back would be appropriate.

Forebodings about hindsight

2006-04-03T18:03:00.000-07:00

I read more than I should. There's a statement that would appall my mother. But I'm all input, perpetual voluminous input, and my output is scattershot and infrequent (look at my posting dates, for example...) Which is why I'd like to refer you today to a piece of laser-tight writing that Steve Coll had in last week's New Yorker. Just read it. As an aspiring writer/analyst, I shake my head in awe. As an American, I weep...

Republicans REFUSE to learn from Europe

2006-03-28T17:23:00.000-08:00

Suddenly, Junior wants to talk immigration, mostly to get everyone off the war, the NSA wiretapping, the CIA covert operative, the (fill in your favorite Junior Admin horror show here!)

Plenty of others are talking about plenty of flavors of this issue, so I'll stick to Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. You know, "All persons born...in the United States..., are citizens of the United States..." (This is also the amendment that Junior is violating with Gitmo and 'extraordinary rendition.' Read up!)

Seems the Republicans want to repeal that Section, cause y'know them wetbacks just keep coming here to have those American babies. And it really conflicts with those Republican family values to break up a family, shipping mom and dad back to TJ while the infant citizen stays here and fends for itself (?)

This, just as France has had fourth and fifth-generation Algerian youth rioting in the streets, burning cars and mugging people, largely because they were born in France, as were their parents, yet French law for many years refused to allow them citizenship. So they are outcasts in the only country they know, with no allegiance to any nation, and no ability to work their way up the ladder of French life.

The same thing's happening in Germany. Just in 1999 were the laws changed to permit many of the Turks born in Germany to be declared citizens. There are still laws on the books there defining 'German' by the mother's bloodline. These go back to 1913. So only 40,000 of the 2,000,000 Turks in Germany have become citizens, even though more than half of these Turks were born in Germany and speak German as natives. They all live in enclaves and most are excluded from voting, or running for office.

Yea, let's get us some more of that racial segregation and artificial underclass here. Apparently the Republicans just can't get enough of that racial hatred...

sing along:
"Should Americans pick crops?
George says 'No!'
'Cause no one but a Mexican
would stoop so low.
And after all, even in Egypt, the pharaohs
Had to import Hebrew braceros"
- Tom Lehrer, 1965 from the song "Senator George Murphy" (elected 1964, California)

SSDG - Same Shit, Different George!

Mourn on April 30th...

2006-03-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

(was on vacation, watching Spring Training. Hope you missed me!)

Lots of noise about the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Marches on the left, Bush stumping to the right. So what?
I'm waiting for April 30th. THAT'S the date that Dems and Progressives ought to focus on. Why?

"[The war] could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
- Sec of Defense Rumsfeld, 2/7/03.

So, on April 30th, six weeks from now, let's remind everyone of the third anniversary of when this pre-emptive strike was supposed to be over, leaving our troops lanquishing in a diabetic haze of thrown candies, needing their gas masks on to protect them from the heady scents of piles of flowers for the victors.
And remind them of that oh-so-deadly self-delusion that this doddering refugee from the Ford Administration uses for judgement.
My one regret about Rumsfeld is that he'll die long before he is universally recognized for the incompetent he is.

Late To the Job Market, Part II

2006-03-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

Junior was down in New Orleans a couple days ago, surveying the damage he's responsible for. I have never heard anyone I'm supposed to respect whine so much about how hard the work is as this clown does at almost every press conference. And I'd put money down that Junior is the first US president, at least since Hoover, and maybe before, to use "how hard the job is" as an excuse for mistakes made by himself or his administration.
But I'm not surprised by his whining. He's never had to show up, much less on time, even for the few months he spent hiding out in the Texas Air Nat'l Guard. He's finally got a job that he wants credit for doing, but he doesn't want to do the job itself, because 'it's hard work!' Hard work? Maybe for you, rich, pampered, whining boy! The guy you followed could negotiate legislation, talk peace with opponents on conference calls, AND get a blow-job, all at exactly the same moment, in the Oval Office. That's a whole different kind of 'hard work,' and we NEVER heard him complain!

Christ, Jan 21, 2009 can't come soon enough!

Late to the Job Market

2006-03-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

Why is Junior so irritable?
Wouldn't you be if suddenly you found yourself with a job you were expected to show up for? Where your absences and vacations were national news? And where you couldn't just quit and sell the business to one of your daddy's friends?
Remember, this is Junior's first full-time job. The governorship of Texas doesn't count. It's the weakest of the 'weak-governor' offices in the US, and the legislature only meets for three months every other year. His entire tenure only had two legislative sessions! And the Lieutenant Gov signs most of the real business. Junior kissed babies, shook hands, and laughed at women being executed. Mostly he went to games at his old ball park!
Why'dja think the family parked him in Texas, and put the bright one in Florida?
Personally, I think they got him the presidency so there'll always be someone to take care of him after his folks kick off and can't cover his ass anymore.
At least he'll have Secret Service protection. God knows he'll need it. I figure he may be the first President who'll want to retire to a foreign country. But who'll have him?

Building the Republican Wall between Church and State

2006-03-07T13:50:00.000-08:00

I swing wildly, from immediate news commentaries to hopefully higher-level pieces of analysis. Case in point today.
I think a part of the Democratic outreach to Christians should point out the Democratic party's incorporation of Jesus's teachings into government's role in people's lives. Feed the hungry, cloth the naked, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, halt and lame, whenever they ask. We are our brothers' (and sisters') keepers, regardless of creed or color. Those are New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society ethics. By incorporating these into government's relationship to its citizens, this becomes reliable help, not 'random acts of kindness' provided by the local church as best it can with the paltry tithe it gets from its parishioners.
These sure as fuck aren't Republican principles! These are Republican "entitlements for the weak" that need to be cut back to provide more tax money to the already-obscenely wealthy, that top 1/10th of 1 percent, most of whom inherited it. Like our president, for example...
The joke here, I guess, is that a true separation of church and state would mean that we would become truly Republican, cutting off any spending on programs for the health and feeding of children, the poor and the elderly. So I guess the latest ReagaNazi budget proposal is in the most absolutist reading of 'a wall between church and state.'

Negatives versus Positives

2006-03-06T10:57:00.000-08:00

Junior's negatives at this point in his 2nd term are the ones Republicans had HOPED for at this point in Clinton's. And at this point in his Administration, Bill was in the process of being impeached! Instead, Bill was in the mid-60 percent range.
Maybe, just maybe, the best way to run the country isn't having one-party rule, electing an incompetent president, and then appointing cabinet heads and support staff that are even more incompetent.
'Course, it's a great way to line Republican pockets...As an example, apparently, (and I can see this headline on a couple of subscription sites, but not on any mainstream news feed) Republicans have proposed cleaning up the United Arab Emirates ports deal, by having an American company join with Dubai Ports World to manage the US ports. Guess what US company" Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Yup! Halliburton...

C'mon! You can't make this shit up!

I gotchya 'free markets' right heah!

2006-03-02T16:23:00.000-08:00

Groucho Marx often recounted the tale of a dinner party at which he propositioned a starlet sitting next to him. 'Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?' Groucho asked, laughing. The starlet, blushing, nodded agreement that she would, and they both laughed.
Later, over drinks, Groucho asked, 'Would you sleep with me for twenty dollars?' This time, the starlet slapped him, hissing 'What kind of girl do you think I am?!'
Said Groucho, 'I know what kind of girl you are. Now we're haggling for price!'

A legislator asked a vintner how he'd feel if he was allowed to mail his wine to any customer in the US, overriding all state liquor sales regulations other than age requirements. The vintner, having wanted to mail his California wines to New York and Florida customers for years, praised the legislator's good sense at eliminating these costly restrictions on the free market.
The next session, the legislator asked the vintner how he'd feel about having to compete against marijuana distributors and cocaine manufacturers for the recreational dollars of his customers. The vintner was appalled that the legislator would propose such a dangerous, unAmerican idea, and wondered what he could be thinking!
Said the legislator, "Now, we're haggling for the meaning of 'free!' "

Whenever I hear anyone (other than a few hard-core libertarians from the Cato Institute) bad-maouth regulations and talk about 'free markets,' I always pause to ask if they endorse selling beer to 12-year-olds, SAMs to the Crips, or marijuana to anyone. If they say 'No!', then we both know what kind of person they are.
Then, the conversation can move on to 'acceptable manners and levels of market regulation.'
At least then the discussion is a rational and realistic negotiation.
To paraphrase Clinton, it depends on how free 'free' is!

Post Traumatic Sedition

2006-03-02T12:34:00.000-08:00

Everyone else will be blogging today about the newly-revealed videos of Junior's Katrina briefings. My only comment is that the ReagaNazis didn't need a video tape to impeach Clinton, but now we have Junior on two videos, lying about using court orders for all wiretaps, and for claiming that no one could've anticipated the breaching of the levees. If a Democratic president committed these crimes, this Congress would be doing NO other business but impeachment. So, again, another instance on to the pile of two-faced-ness that has created hypocrisy-fatigue in the American populace.
No, I want to talk about the new assault by the ReagaNazis on our troops, our vets, those guys and gals in uniform that these asses use up like toilet paper, but won't join in battle (Five-Deferment Dick Cheney, for example.) It's not been enough to reduce death benefits, to reduce VA funding, to send the troops off through multiple deployments with insufficient armor, dirty water and poisonous food (aw, hell, I'm not doing links, look it up!) The lunch room at one of my clients got a new USERRA poster yesterday, and the protections for returning soldiers, especially ones in the Guard and Reserve, are pathetic.
Now, it's an assult on the possibility that these soldiers suffer from mental damage as a result of being in battle, and being treated like this. Yesterday's NY Times sported an opinion from an AEI shill, Sally Satel, who wrote that many of the soldiers claiming post-traumatic-stress syndrome (PTSD) are just baby-boom slackers who see this as financial security. She worked the wards of the VA during the reign of Bush the Elder, but her attitude here reminds me of Patton's walk through tents of the injured in WWII, and abusing soldiers with shell-shock. She uses the fact that some of these soldiers took years, maybe tens of years, before finally showing up for treatment, as evidence that they're probably faking.
How long, how hard, how much time and money, have we spent trying to get soldiers who are psychologically damaged by their service to come forward and ask for help? yet here's this clown, with NO military service, setting up the ReagaNazi excuses to cut back on the financial disaster that is coming from the support America owns our soldiers, even at the current, niggardly levels of the Junior Administration. The $2 trillion estimated total long-term cost of the Invasion of Iraq needs to be cut back to allow more money to flow into crony pockets, and to the ReagaNazi marketing centers, like the Hudson Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the AEI that Satel shills for.
Not only do these slacker vets need to be cut off, but anyone who sympatizes with them, or thinks Junior's doing a lousy job, needs to be investigated for sedition. Like Laura Berg, a nurse at a VA hospital who wrote a letter to a local paper criticizing the government's Katrina response and VA support. She finally spoke out this morning on Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now show. The transcript of the interview might inform the AEI's Satel as to why many vets are having resurgences of shell-shock. Instead, the government is apparently trying to shut Nurse Berg up.
It's what we've come to expect from the chickenhawks and cowards that populate the White House and the rest of the Republican Congress: the vets should suck it up and not ask for help, on the battle field or afterward, and anyone who says otherwise needs to be threatened with arrest.
War on the cheap, and don't ask questions! These people have no shame.

Pravda and TASS (for those of you old enough...)

2006-03-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

One of the coffeeshops I frequent got suckered into a cable-n-broadband package, and hung a big flat-panel up to entertain the folks as they wire up for the morning. The broadband's wireless, so I can pick-up e-mails at lunch, for free, and do some posting.
The owner's a liberal, but by the time I get there, he's switched from the CNN he opens with, to FOX to calm the ReagaNazi cluster at the main table.
This morning, while another guy stood beside me, sipping his coffee and waiting for his breakfast order, I asked the owner when he switches back to CNN.
He said he usually doesn't.
I said 'I can't watch Pravda!'
The coffee came out the nose of the guy next to me.
Obviously, he got the reference, but I wasn't sure how he took it (other than strongly) until he finished coughing, and started laughing.
'Course, the more correct reference would be TASS, the broadcast agency. Pravda was print. Like the NY Post and the Washington Times.

By the way, have you ever noticed the naming (unoriginality? riding another's reputation? assumption of a stupid, confused readership?) of the REAL newspapers and the RNC fishwrappers in NY and DC? It's truly a bizarro-world arrangement:
NY Times and Washington Post - (formerly) REAL newspapers
Washington Times and NY Post - Moon and Murdoch publish their versions of Pravda for the RNC

Breeding Tells The Tale

2006-02-28T12:10:00.000-08:00

Why is anyone surprised by this Dubai Ports deal? Money knows no national allegiance, Junior is all about money, and anything that makes him and his a LOT more money is just fine. Since no American company of significance manages any of the major ports, there's no Bush money in putting them into American hands. But the Mahtouock (sp?) family that runs Dubai are also heavy investors in the Carlyle group that the Bush family has a lot of money in, and son Neil's Insight company has funding from that same family. So Junior won't bite the hand that feeds his family.
In doing this, Junior demonstrates his lack of faith in the American system to provide safe harbor for his family through thick and thin, and he demonstrates his priorities: family first, law second, nation last.
Not surprising for a Mexican father who's seen his family and city neglected ond abused by a single-party government for 70 years, (the goal of the current ReagaNaziCorp.) But for the wealthy son of the wealthy son of the wealthy son of a new York international banker? Well, that's Junior's argument for the elimination of the inheritance tax, and it speaks volumes to me about why it needs to be kept, and the rate increased.
By definition, Junior is an American, because he was born here (more later.) But by temperament, by family upbringing, and as evidenced by every act he has committed in his sorry life, Junior is not American. He is almost anti-American. How'd this clown get to be president? Oh, yea! Family!

Cheney leaving? Won't hold my breath!

2006-02-28T11:42:00.000-08:00

My favorite load'a'crap rumor going around right now is that Cheney will step down/be pushed out after the 2006 elections.
Reasons given: 1) He's a liability since the shooting. 2) His health is failing. 3) The Republican Party doesn't have a vice president to run for president in 2008.
Bullshit! In order:
1) When hasn't he been a liability? Please name ONE example of political or administrative competence. Not even brilliance, just competence. Everything this guy touches turns to shit, from energy policy to hunting with friends. I'll bet Ms. Willeford doesn't return his calls anymore, either.
2) This guy's health isn't any worse or better than it was when he picked himself to be vice-president, except that his knees have had heart-attacks since then. And when he's tired, he can just rest out of sight. Every one simply assumes he's off cooking up more tragedies for America to live through and pay for.
3) Republicans need a VP to run for prez in 2008. No argument, this has been the usual pattern for the Republicans. Nixon, Ford, Bush I, Quayle(!?). But the problem here isn't that Cheney won't run, the problem is, who would replace him?
Any respectable candidate for 2008 would want to avoid having two years of the taint of the Worst President Ever. (This is deservedly in caps.) This would immediately gurantee his loss at the polls, and the end of his political career.
Nor would he be acceptable to the Bush White House, since anyone who speaks English and can hold two thoughts in their mind at the same time is going to make Bush look even less competent than he does now. Why do you think the only event Bush and Cheney both spoke at in the last six years was when they were giving unsworn testimony to the 9-11 Commission?!
So what's the point of putting some new face in to replace Cheney when you can't show him off without reminding every voter of the turd you foisted off on them for president in the first place. If anything, it may run off even more voters than the current 'team' will repulse with their ongoing mis-management and malfeasance.

More real stuff later today...

The New Blog

2006-02-25T18:10:00.000-08:00

(Miles from home, sans wires, I create an e-mail address, then a blog that uses that address as the contact. No actual connection to my human presence, no link except technical, for the hardwearers that may at a later date subpoena logs and squeeze the MAC address off the IP traffic that sends my posts to the Blogspot server(s?) wherever they may be.)

So let's just bust out of the gate with two little comments.

First, they're called 'ReagaNazis.' They hide behind the well-marketed image that went on the box we now know as the Republican Party, and anyone in the party that argues with the party line is besmirching the memory and ideals of a B-grade TV star, front-man for Darts and Brondes, who was already senile by the time he got tothe White House, and relied on his ability to read cue cards to get him through 8 years + 1 speech of chief executive-ness.

They hate America. At least the incredibly successful America of the 20th century. The one that won two world wars, was a manufacturing powerhouse, gave it's soldiers free college, and set the goal of assuring its citizens that what they bought was what they thought they were buying, what they drank was healthy, what they breathed didn't poison them.

ReagaNazis hate that stuff. They're big on the 'every man for himself!' crap they're picthing as the 'Ownership Society', except that most of them couldn't make it without the stable infrastructure that America pioneered and that the other Western nations emulated.

Our current beast-in-chief is the best example there is. Thought experiment (TE.): Imagine that George Bush , at any point in his careening career, is allowed to fail, to live with the results of his complete ineptitude, to have to learn from his mistakes. With his demonstrable lack of a learning curve, this clown would already have had a child (you didn't know about the Mexican abortion his folks forced the girl to have?) and be in jail for stealing from the company that took over his failed oil company but kept him as a mid-level manager cause he knew where his wells were drilled.

His parents money, cronyism, name, whatever you want to call it, are what make us the suffering sheep we are today. Compare him to Clinton, a guy who made it entirely on the amazing quality of his mind, and a work ethic that always pulled it out of the fire instead of, in Junior's case, always screwed it into the ground.
No comparison...

The other thing I wanted to get off in this first post was:

F.I.R.

Filibuster

Impeach

Repeal

FIR has to be the marching plan for the reconstruction of America by, dare I say it, the Democratic party and its elected officials, starting NOW!
Take a goddamned page from the Harridan of Bel-Air, Nancy Reagan, and 'Just Say No!' to everything this Junior Administration an its fellow travelers in Congress propose. Use every trick in the book to stop these clowns, to stand at least for NOT being haters of the American citizen, like these Republicans are.

Here we go...