Damned if you do

Since Republicans can be relied upon to demonize any Supreme Court nominee as a socialist-leaning, immigrant-loving, America-hating, abortion peddler, then why should president Obama worry too much about offering a choice as reasonable as Judge Sotomayor for consideration?

Why not go ahead and pick an "activist judge" with great big liberal talons and jam the choice down their protesting paunches, a judicial foie gras if you will.

Libertarian Paradise

I like to tell the type of Christian that wishes to impose his beliefs on others that if they will only travel to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan they can live in a theocratic paradise without waiting.

A new YouTube video employs that approach with Libertarians:

The Body

Jesse Ventura casts pearls before swine in this defense of the rule of law.



Thank you Mr. Ventura.

The Wind Beneath his Wings

In April George F. Will wrote a column called, "America's Bad Jeans" in which he characterized an adult wearing denim as "an obnoxious misuse of freedom".

In my new socialist homeland (America according to Gingrich) the professional journalists have begun to emulate amusing cranks like Donald Mills ("The Problem With Young People Today Is...").

I like George Will, but not as much as I like wearing jeans.

The Law of the Jungle

Here is a summary of the health-care plan now taking shape in Washington:

Let wolves cull those unable to afford insurance.

Liberals aren't expected to object since the plan will be good for the struggling wolf population and the process is all-natural.

Conservatives aren't expected to object since they could care less what happens to poor people.

The insurance industry is expected to back the plan since it makes their offerings more palatable by comparison.

Fox News is happy about the prospect of airing, "When wolves attack."

Everybody wins!

Life of the Party

I have often thought that Dick Cheney might be suffering from the effects of Dementia, and is perhaps more worthy of pity than scorn. However, until such suspicion becomes validated, I feel as though I must treat his statements as intentionally expressed, however paranoid, delusional, or self-destructive.

When Dick Cheney recently insulted Colin Powell I found myself wondering all over again if he ought to quit driving and check into an adult daycare center.

Lawrence Wilkerson, in the video below, seems to hold Dick Cheney responsible for his insults to Mr. Powell and offers this admonition:



Whether Dick Cheney is intentionally harming his party or deliberately harming his party is the question here. There seems no debate as to if he is harming the party.

Neither a disgruntled postal worker or VP be.

The Bush Years: A Holocaust of Truth

It is an insult to The American Way to treat Dick Cheney as if he were other than a disgraced, dishonest, hypocrite. To compare what he once said about torture with his words now, and his deeds then, is to understand the worthlessness of words that escape his lying pie-hole:

"The United States is a country that takes human rights seriously. We do not torture. It’s against our laws and against our values. And we expect all those who serve America to conduct themselves accordingly, and we enforce those rules...America is a fair and a decent country. President Bush has made it clear, both publicly and privately, that our duty to uphold the laws and standards of this nation make no exceptions for wartime. As he put it, we are in a fight for our principles and our first responsibility is to live by them. The war on terror, after all, is more than a contest of arms and more than a test of will. It’s also a war of ideas."

There is a great post over at Obsidian Wings where you can read this, and other quotations on the topic of torture. The men we consider great today are the ones that lived by their words.

Quotations on Torture

Gullibility in its lesser-known form is the failure to believe things that are demonstrably true. Dick Cheney, for instance, is a bald-faced liar and the things which he says are dishonest. At this point it takes mountainous gullibility to believe him.

Perspective

Here are a couple of numbers to keep in mind.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 killed about 6,000 people (5948 fatalities and 24 people missing). You can get the full details here:

Wikipedia 911

Researchers at the Institute of Medicine in D.C. say that 18,314 adults die in the USA each year because they are uninsured and can't get proper health care:

Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late


This summary shows the penalty incurred when society favors profit to human life:

"The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash. "

It is findings like these that force me to hope that president Obama is sincere about solving the health-care emergency we face. I think the measure of his sincerity will be a publicly-funded single-payer-style plan. I know that Ted Kennedy will fight for that with his dying breath, but I'm not convinced president Obama is willing to upset the lobbyists just to please the people that voted for him.

But...

1 in 7 American adults are uninsured.
70% of personal bankruptcies are medically related.
18,000+ annual deaths are caused by the absence of insurance.

and I hope those number can no longer be ignored.

Commentary from the dustbin

David Letterman recently offered up this look back at the wisdom of Cheney:

How'd He Do?

Remember those pictures of Saddam Hussein ironing his own shirts in his underwear? That's my mental picture of Dick Cheney. He's just a sad, publicly disgraced dictator, uncomfortable in his new role.

Black and Bill

Here is an interview that Bill Moyers conducts with William Black, who was formerly a senior regulator that cracked down on banks during the S&L crisis of the 1980s. In the interview Mr. Black does not wear kid gloves or sugar coat a thing. It is a very entertaining interview:

You can watch it here

I would like to see Mr. William Black take over for Mr. Geithner, since Timothy continues to act as if there is a marketing crisis rather than a banking crisis.

In Obama's Shadow

It is time someone said this, "Hillary Clinton is doing a great job as Secretary of State, and she is leaving all the old Clinton baggage out of sight."

I half-wondered if it was going to be a freak-show over there at State, but Hillary seems head-down, working hard, and capable.

Collins and horse rumps

Current events have made a horse's ass of Maine Senator Susan Collins. A short time after she went flitting around pundits belittling pandemic preparedness as a ridiculous stimulus, we find ourselves amidst a global swine flu pandemic.

This video serves up a little crow for her to eat:



The GOP has deteriorated to the point that I wonder how anyone would want to be associated with it. From Susan Collins to Bobby Jindal to Karl Rove to Dick Cheney to Newt Gingrich to Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh and the incomparable Michele Bachmann the GOP is one joke after another.

Perhaps it is clarifying moments like these which give Sen. Arlen Specter the rationale for switching parties?

There is more to governance, especially now, than whining about paying taxes and immigrant bashing.

Swine Flu, Bird Flu, TamiFlu, Hazah!

When I heard that Swine Flu was combatted by Tamiflu I remembered a little something about the bird flu pandemic, Tamiflu, and Donald Rumsfeld:

"NEW YORK (Fortune) - The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it's proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that's now the most-sought after drug in the world.

Rumsfeld served as Gilead (Research)'s chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.

Source: Rumsfeld's growing stake in Tamiflu"

One must plumb paranoia to barrel bottom to believe that press reaction to the potential swine flu pandemic is a ploy whose intent is scaring world governments into purchasing Tamiflu.

I do wonder, however, what happened to those Tamiflu doses purchased to ward off bird flu. According to AskDocWeb.com Tamiflu lasts for 5 years, and the bird-flu scare was in 2005.

Maybe we can at least sell that stuff off to forgotten-world countries for cheap and help alleviate their suffering while we replenish our own first-place stocks?

Lie to me

New reporting suggests that the Bush administration decided to use torture to obtain false confessions that could be used to "prove" operational links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

Jonathan Landay writes...

"The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist."

Source: Mean means for dishonest ends

Fools can be intelligent enough to be devious, but will act in ways that are contrary to their interests. An evil fool like George W. Bush will stop at nothing to get what he doesn't intend.

Out in front

Here is a short clip from the movie "The Corporation" in which Robert A.G. Monks explains how CEO pay went stratospheric:




The bubble was fun while it lasted, but it done r-u-n-o-f-t. Perhaps we should now turn to those who saw it coming and tried to warn us?

I'd rather see that than politicians let loose with billions of our tax dollars.

Quick hits

Here are a couple of stats to ponder:

In America, about 22 percent of adults do not have health insurance.

For every 1 percent increase in the jobless rate, 1.1 million people lose coverage.

Source: Recession leads to health care crisis

Fat Cats

One thing that I keep coming back to in the early days of the Obama administration is that when it comes to fiscal policy, president Barak is an avid fat cat feeder.

The phrase "fat cat" is a pretty good analogy here. A fat cat doesn't play much, and doesn't catch much vermin. A fat cat mostly sleeps and eats, and the fatter it gets the more it will eat.

If you care about the health of the cat you must cut back on the food and kick it outside, where it will at least have to fend off other, leaner cats.

One other thing that I come back to in the early days of the Obama administration is that he got where he is on a groundswell of small donations and is therefore not as beholden to Wall Street as his policies imply.

How is this country going to turn things around if changing administrations has all the impact of changing the drapes at the whitehouse?

Is D.C. so corrupt that not even multiple national crises, a rout at the voting booth, and a qualified leader can change the course?

It is sure starting to look like we're just circling the drain.

Disfunctional Democracy?

Are we a functioning democracy?

If by functioning democracy it is meant that political will and popular will are one, then we haven't been one for decades, as this video makes clear:



When Obama ran for office he liked the phrase, "Yes, we can".

Where is that Obama now?

Was he just another insincere politician out to comfort the comfortable?

Step right up

The best way to humiliate a fool is indeed to hand them a microphone:



I'm not sure these self-infatuated, circus-grade clowns get the recognition they deserve, but wise democrats should immediately cede the microphone whenever one of them wishes to speak for the GOP.

More Simon Johnson

I like people that write clearly and in uncomplicated language, for instance this paragraph from Simon Johnson as he analyzes America's economic woes:

"The root problem is uncertainty—in our case, uncertainty about whether the major banks have sufficient assets to cover their liabilities. Half measures combined with wishful thinking and a wait-and-see attitude cannot overcome this uncertainty. And the longer the response takes, the longer the uncertainty will stymie the flow of credit, sap consumer confidence, and cripple the economy—ultimately making the problem much harder to solve. Yet the principal characteristics of the government’s response to the financial crisis have been delay, lack of transparency, and an unwillingness to upset the financial sector."

- Simon Johnson -

You can read the entire article here:

The Quiet Coup

What has disturbed me most about Obama's tenure so far is just how little our fiscal policy has changed from the days of George W. Bush. This "plan" by Geithner is cash for trash repackaged with different lingo.