RaptureAlready!

Stumbling Upon the Numbers

2009-10-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

(le Onion)

"A MEDITATION on single mothers and what is called the French model, where the state actually supplies a mother's helper to do laundry and errands ...for married mothers, too."

— an R/A Ivestigative Google

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It's pretty astounding, and the 9/12 tea-birthers we see on Faux Noose are gape-mouth angry and aghast that a place that has a population that is 2½ times the size of Texas maintains a GDP that is 2.2 times the size of the famously high Tejas GDP too.

With SUCH similar economic output, how is it that France can afford the most inclusive universal healthcare system in the world, while Texas sports the most uninsured people in America?

The kooks like to call this curiously comparative economic outcome the stultifying effect of socialism... but we'll have to leave it there.

Moving on: Sex is HOT!

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Too Much Transparency?

2009-09-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

Just Biden our time in Kabul?

(NYT/AP)

"Although Mr. Obama has said that a stable Afghanistan is central to the security of the United States, some advisers said he was also wary of becoming trapped in an overseas quagmire. Some Pentagon officials say they worry that he is having what they called 'buyer’s remorse' after ordering an extra 21,000 troops there within weeks of taking office before even settling on a strategy."

— Peter Baker and Elizabeth Bumiller, NYTimes

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When the argument was Cut-n-Run™ vs. the Surge®, (and NOT about secretly paying off Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province), those highly argumentative memes were at least well-formed, group-tested, political propaganda brands that let people latch onto something. Obama's more public dithering over what not to do, instead of what to do, will drive people into Carter-like uncertainty.

Americans aren't educated for debate. There is a supreme being who arbitrates, and CEO's are falsely imbued with omnipotent powers by lay people, even though executives are actually beholden to a board of directors who prefer to work in secrecy.

"Mr. Obama met in the Situation Room with his top advisers on Sept. 13 to begin chewing over the problem, said officials involved in the debate.

"Among those on hand were Mr. Biden; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; James L. Jones, the national security adviser; and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

It's where we are on healthcare, now that everything that would be allowed on the table is ostensibly on it; we're just fighting over what NOT to do, instead of what TO do.

The Democrats have the naïve idea that public airing of these quarrels serve the greater good in a healthy debate within a republic, but we're not a healthy republic.

"They reached no consensus, so three or four more such meetings are being scheduled. 'There are a lot of competing views,' said one official who, like others in this article, requested anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations."

We're a babbling mass of confused tribes who believe the hand of God is guiding us by whispering in our fearless leader's ear.

Obama's drawing the wrong conclusion from his win, believing that Americans are hip to transparent public deliberation more than we are used to arguing about pre-defined tokens of brand identification.

A regulated exchange of actuarial products? What the hell is that, and what does it have to do with Communism™ or America © GOP 1776?

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Dr. Death and the Economist

2009-09-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Glib globs of misinformation.

(Economist)

"Unfortunately for Mr Obama, some of his academic chums have pondered seriously and publicly about the questions...

"Ezekiel Emanuel, a doctor whose brother is Mr Obama’s chief of staff, wrote a paper for the Lancet, a medical journal, in which he proposed a system for determining who should be first in line for such things as liver transplants or vaccines during an epidemic."

— The Economist

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While that's an applicable take on the ruthlessly glib rationale of Emanuel, who can afford to consider policies that will never affect him, the Economist whistles just as glibly past the cemetery when they say, "the uninsured have the most to gain, but they are only 15% of the population. Everyone else has something to lose."

"Among other factors, he suggested taking age into account, with adolescents and young adults getting priority, because they have fully developed personalities and many years of life ahead. Dr Emanuel even included a graph showing voters above and below the ideal age how much less their lives are worth.

"Conservative talk radio predictably dubbed him 'Dr Death'"

First, many people only think that they're insured, unaware as they are that the corporate death panel has already decided under what circumstances they're going to die.

Obama's own story talks about his mother haggling with the insurance company when it came time for them to pay for cancer treatment. Many more than 15% are effectively not covered for anything less than $5000 worth of treatment... on top of the $2500.00 they pay in premiums and co-pays for office visits. People pay seven to $8,000 dollars a year before the insurance company breaks a sweat to dig up some extenuating circumstance to avoid ever paying anything at all.

It's not difficult information to reveal, and the Economist is not alone, but it should be at least a little embarrassed for not adding the extra paragraph.

I won't even expound on their blithe use of the term Obamacare for a legislative situation in which he's largely left lawmaking to Congress. Suffice to say it's not particularly analytical of the Economist.

Something from the Commentariat:

"For example, we need to look no further than the stories of death row inmates being released after 15 years because oopsie, they didn't do it, or the public school administrator who expels a kid under a zero tolerance drug policy because he's possessing Tylenol.

"The onus is on Obama and his administration to prove to the American people that their reforms won't be an even bigger, more expensive failure than the present system."

— cmb53208

Opponents of reform suggest a few failures invalidate everything, that unless perfection is possible no policy is preferable.

Harrowing examples of death row mishap would be more relevant if the prison industry was driven by an insatiable urge to execute everybody... such as the insurance industry is guilty of rampant rescission, cases in which the insurance company accepts your monthly payment for years until you make a significant claim... then, all of a sudden, they see you forgot to mention the in-grown toenail you had fixed 10 years ago, and they drop you, now that you're diabetic... with a scarlet letter by your name, in some database somewhere, and you won't be seen again by anyone until your leg needs amputating in some emergency room.

We fear mistakes, naturally, but what about what's happening on purpose, on account of the defining strategy of the corporate business plan? The corporate insurance industry survives by denying us care...

...by design, in collusion, not by mistake.

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Winter Forecast Smackdown '09

2009-08-31T14:38:00.000-07:00

The Farmers' Almanac is predicting a cold winter, while the National Weather Service is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country.

Umpiring the Hatfeilds and McCoys

(HuffPo)

"The almanac's forecast, however, is at odds with the National Weather Service, which is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country because of an El Nino system in the tropical Pacific Ocean, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md."

— Clarke Canfield, AP

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Numbing cold... the Almanac says... in certain places.

Plumes of extreme rising heat in, say, California's central valley, cause thermal troughs that pull extremely cold air in at the periphery of the hot column of rising air, leaving San Francisco relatively well-air conditioned and foggy in the cold air sucked in from the Pacific Ocean... while the central valley is broiling.

Standard models of convection explain the so-called conflict between the Farmer's Almanac and the NOAA.

Where there is unusual cold, there is likely to be unusual heat, somewhere, pulling the cold air in. For instance, the almanacs' prediction of a dry winter in the southeast probably means heat and drought further south, where a thermal trough caused by rising heat is pulling cold air down from Canada, into the Great Lakes and the Midwest.

"This winter, the 200-page publication says it'll be cool and snowy in the Northeast, bitterly cold and dry in the Great Lakes states, and cold and snowy across the North Central states.

"It says the Northwest will be cool with average precipitation, the Southwest will be mild and dry, the South Central states will be cold and wet, and the Southeast will be mild and dry."

For another example, if we are to see hotter temperatures from global warming, we will also see especially colder temperatures on the periphery of hot spots, even as the hot spots grow hotter and wider over the years. Uncharacteristically cold temperatures will be experienced on the periphery of uncharacteristically hot temperatures.

It's standard convection, to be expected, but those stuck in that cold will be scoffing at the lunacy of some kind of climate change conspiracy. All they know is that THEY are cold, while droughts elsewhere drive the price of food skyward. The heat is too far away for them to relate it to their current condition, and they will be apoplectic, like a 9/12 birther-brigadier standing before his death panel, but it's the god Physics... equal and opposite reaction and all of that... not a conspiracy theory.

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Joe the Nerd is Heard

2009-08-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

The snafu heard 'round the world.

(HuffPo)

"I'm getting a little ticked off that it feels like the knees are buckling a little bit," Ferraro said. "We have overwhelming majorities in both the House and the Senate. And we own the whole shooting match. And I'm just getting...

"It's very frustrating to watch you try and compromise with these people who aren't willing to compromise with you."

— Joe the Nerd, Audubon, PA

More about Joe...

..but first, Charlie Rose talks to Arianna and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, along with Ross Douthat (a right-wing extremist from inside the belt-way). Okay, no, he's not an extremist, but he probably voted for Palin.

Anyway... they cogently discuss Obama's legacy, only 8 months in to his presidency, and Douthat aptly states that a tepid healthcare bill without a public option will be judged largely on how people feel about the economy come Nov. 2010.

Arianna is more pessimistic, fairly believing that the public option is all there is, that the larger part of Obama's support will collapse in its absence, while Doris Kearns Goodwin just hopes that everybody will get along... and that Obama will put Lincoln away for a while and do his FDR imitation.

...and she has a point. Lincoln did a lot of conciliatory maneuvers to preserve the union, but the Southern racist extremists were never willing to compromise in the first place.

Meanwhile, the president takes this very question from a caller with a common touch, one self-described Joe the Nerd, on a right wing conservative call-in radio show.

Like a true nerd earning his network administrator cred, Joe Ferraro, a 48-year-old father of three, one running his own business, fixing computers, left himself on speakerphone while talking to Obama, all but crashing his chance of a lifetime by wearing that 21st century version a pocket protector in public... the speakerphone.

...but the message was heard from a moderate wondering why Obama's "knees are buckling," and the term became the meme for the rest of the week. So did Obama's wordy answer, which didn't answer the question directly as much as it put the question in relevant context.

"I guarantee you, Joe, we are going to get health care reform done," Obama said. "And I know that there are a lot of people out there who have been hand-wringing, and folks in the press are following every little twist and turn of the legislative process.

"You know, passing a big bill like this is always messy. FDR was called a socialist when he passed Social Security. JFK and Lyndon Johnson, they were both accused of a government takeover of health care when they passed Medicare. This is the process that we go through."

Joe's moderate voice is right, and so are Arianna and Doris... (even Rodd Douthat in his observations, if not his apparent hopes and dreams for a lame duck presidency come November 2010).

Obama just needs to do what needs to be done and let the inevitable chips fall where they may. It's time to put the teachable moment aside, now that we've seen what anybody has to put on the table, and act on the best ideas... which happens to be John Edwards idea, the public option in a regulated exchange with qualified public policies.

However, I would emphasize that No One, not even the private insurance plans need participate in the exchange at all if they don't want to.

If all there is in the health insurance exchange are the public option, Medicare, the VA, Medicaid, and the federal employee plans... so be it. Let the private industry compete out in the Wild West where they've done so well... and call it a compromise. In fact, say, "they win." They're unregulated, and let the buyer decide.

See the Charlie Rose interview.

Texas: The Emergency Room of America

2009-08-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

Identity Theft: the independent South is not who they think they are.

(HuffPo)

"According to Gallup, of the 25 states with the greatest percentage of the uninsured, all but three are based in the South or the Midwest.

"These same regions also have the largest percentage of populations who believe widely perpetuated mistruths about the Obama agenda, including allegations that the president will set up 'death panels' and wants a complete government takeover of the health care system."

— Sam Stein, Huffington Post

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Texans are such doormats, trapped in their neo-plantation paradigm, pretending they're Wild West independents when they're really just dumb, southern dupes with the lowest wages and no healthcare, working their uneducated fingers to the bone for make-believe cowboys, who play them like a willing, sycophantic fiddle.

Higher percentages of Texas, New Mexico, and Mississippi residents are without health insurance -- roughly one in four -- than is true for any other states in the U.S. In Massachusetts, where legislation requires all residents to carry health insurance coverage or face a tax penalty, 5.5% are without insurance -- the lowest percentage in the country.

Listen to them brag about their unemployment rate, when they're literally enslaved by low wages and Faux Noose ideology, by their snuff-snorting elite masters, the wealthy conflict-mongers heavily invested in the perpetual Cold War mentality that makes everyone your enemy.

Instead of paying their workforce enough for adequate preventative healthcare and continuing education, these executive urban cowboys wearing boots made in China leave it to the emergency rooms, where the rest us pick up the bill for corporate disinterest in the well-being of its low-wage employees.

No, you won't EVER see this in print, because the truth is too insulting to Southern PC sensitivities, but these gullible sweatshop minions are too caught up in identity mythology to actually DO something in the best interest of their children and grandparents... so invested are they in their dictated and completely made up identity.

It's a national embarrassment. The entire, modern, developed world is laughing at the gullibility and cringing at the duplicity, while Texas revels in an absurdly false identity that NOBODY is buying.

Elsewhere, we have the most progressive, educated, wealthy, literate, and, yes, the most elite regions of the country, the Northeast and Northwest, fighting to bring affordable healthcare to the used and abused... especially to Texas... but the South has got to learn first. The poverty and long lines in the hallway outside the emergency room are the truth, NOT grandma's death panel promoted on Faux Noose.

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Maddow Makes the Dick Army Connection

2009-08-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

Rachel Maddow ties Dick Armey to the 9/12 birther brigadiers and challenges Coburn (R-Oklahoma) when she pretty much co-hosts Meet the Press.

Two minutes in, Coburn says that America has earned the disruptive, threatening discord that David Gregory has ably tied to the Oklahoma City bombing. The debate, Coburn said, when asked about the tone, "is NOT about healthcare. It's about an uncontrolled federal government."

To tell the truth, Coburn was referring to government earning the ire, not America, but the public is suffering the pre-fab protests just the same. The public is getting hit in the drive-by shootings the pantaloon goons are pulling, their time now wasted, abused by people disinterested in debate.

There's little point in quoting, because so much is said in the stammering tone of voice, but Maddow begins to dismantle the men at 4 minutes, 30 seconds, and shows David Gregory how it's done. At 7 minutes, she uses one of Dick Armey's legs to pick the rest of him out of her teeth.

But Maddow did fail to properly refute Dick Armey's claim that Moveon.org aired ads comparing Bush to Hitler.

MoveOn didn’t create the ads. They were submitted by contestants in a contest sponsored by MoveOn. If the debate's about who organizes and provides the venue or forum, it's fair to ask, what the difference is between the Moveon incident and the 9/12-birther conspiracy theorist's cookie-cutter threats fomented by FOX Noose and other Dick Army associates.

Obviously, we can compare the body count. A MILLION dead bodies in Iraq, many more wounded, 3 million uprooted, untold numbers mentally ruined by post-traumatic shock... the question of who's a bigger fascist is won by the guy with the most bodies around his belt.

We see the same RNC, GOP, the pantaloon goons marching in lock-step, mouthing Steve Doocy's morning propaganda release, the same way the Republican congressional staffers and Bush campaign leaders manned the ranks of that other so-called spontaneous public unrest: the Brooks Brother's rebellion that disrupted the 2002 recount in Florida.

Meanwhile, Dick Armey's obvious efforts to mask corporate lobbying as popular uprising are well-documented case studies in Astroturf installation.

See more at MSNBC TV.

Katie Couric Condemns Canadian Seals

2009-08-15T17:32:00.000-07:00

Living further-up to her Edward R. Morrow award for journalism, Ms. Couric applies critical thinking to reportage on the town hall bootjacks hoping to turn every policy debate into a referendum on their philosophically unrelated pet peeves.

What's Guns got to do with it?

(HuffPo)

"At a town meeting hosted by Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania resident stood up to say that the health care debate has "awakened the sleeping giant."
Not exactly.

What's it's done, it seems, is stirred a hornets nest, and uncovered disturbing attitudes and emotions that have nothing to do with policy."

— Katie Couric

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Some people wonder what's become of Katie Couric, ever since she effectively stopped any chance of Sarah Palin ever running for public office outside of Southeastern Kansas... or as long as those election 2008 interviews are archived on YouTube.

Something from the Commentariat:

"I remember back in March '03 when Ms. Couric said 'Navy Seals rock' on Today. That remark has left a bad taste in my mouth ever since but I must say, Katie you are forgiven and have redeemed yourself in the last year with your Palin interview and now this. Does remind me a bit of Walter."

— timbonotes

Navy seals rock better in some ways than in others. For example, they make GREAT charity calendars when the pentagon has to do fundraising and bake sales to fund the new paramilitary troops being institutionalized among the ranks of that teaming hotbed of savage social radicalism, ACORN.

"Are we really still debating health care when a man brings a handgun to a church where the President is speaking? How does a swastika spray-painted on a Congressman's office further a discussion about Medicare?"

Let's agree to disagree without condemning an entire class of people who have the Best Healthcare America Has to Offer... Canadian Seals.

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Devil Went Down to Georgia

2009-08-14T15:59:00.000-07:00

On the first anniversary of the so-called Georgia-Ossetia war, the most that can be said is that it didn't really matter.

Ossetia, we hardly new ye.

(The Economist)

"Depending on where you stand, the war can be seen as the sinister culmination of a systematic provocation by a neo-imperialist Russia or as a murderously aggressive gambit by a Caucasian strongman wrongheadedly backed by the West."

— The Economist

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Soooo, um... why can't we see it as the sinister, systematic, provocation by a neo-imperialist Russia of a murderously aggressive strongman wrongheadedly backed by the West?

Some of us hope we CAN have it all, after all, but seriously, the side-taking in a conflict hardly anyone in the West even knew existed until it erupted in light gunfire was specious Cold War nostalgia, and little more.

"With a detailed chronology of who did and decided what in the days and hours leading up to the war still (oddly) unavailable, an accurate assessment of the causes of war is still impossible."

At best, these are all bad actors sitting on a narrow trade route from which very few of the real, native inhabitants derive much benefit from the real resources over which the world is arguing.

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Gay Inc. Outraged About Being Dismissed

2009-08-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

The legal and political LGBT coalition that lost the Prop 8 battle doesn't take a tucker to the new same-sex marriage upstarts who see no use for them.

Straights Acting: Ali Shams and Kaelan Housewright hope to remove "marriage" from the definition of marriage altogether.

(EdgeSF)

"The groups also argue that their extensive experience and expertise in litigating the very factual issues before the court would make them of great assistance to the parties and the court"

— Lisa Keen, ebar.com

More about the kerfuffle at ebar.com.

Gay Inc. doesn't realize that THEY lost their case in the first place. We saw these people argue Prop 8 in front of the California Supreme Court, and they sounded like junior varsity debate team alternates, always on the defense rather than acting like actual plaintiffs in the case.

Barging in on new cases working their way to the US Supreme Court, these groups feel slighted by the cool, legalese reception the receive.

"Lawyers, no matter how experienced or well-meaning, should not be permitted to use intervention to involve themselves in litigation where the parties have chosen to retain other counsel."

But it's all smiles from Shannon Minter, who lost the Prop 8 case he argued for the National Center for Lesbian Rights last March.

"It's time to put aside any past disagreements and work together to present the very best legal arguments and the strongest possible factual record," says Minter. "We have much respect for the plaintiffs' attorneys and look forward to working with them."

Meanwhile, it's argued in the LGBTQC community, or at least by me, that the previous battles were EQCA and Lambda Legal Defense's to lose, and that they lost by being insular, turf-warring not-so-non-profits acting like corporations that are more interested in protecting their market share.

Some hope to sidline professional politics:

"Realistically, 1 million signatures is an awful lot," Lowe said. It would be more realistic if between 250,000 and 500,000 signatures were collected by volunteers, with the rest coming from paid gatherers, he said."

— Chaz Lowe,
Yes on Equality

This is the inner-gay scene battle we're seeing now. If Gay Inc. is made any more irrelevant by this court case and by the cute young Turks jumpstarting the marriage movement from the grassroots, these failed establishment groups stand to lose control of millions of dollars and people, fundraising turf that they've monopolized for years.

More about the internecine battle at ebar.com.

Heritage Foundation Fights Child Protection Law?

2009-08-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

Is that Potter calling the cattle hot?

(YouTube)

"The website describes the trend in America - and particularly in Congress - to use the criminal law to 'solve' every problem, punish every mistake (instead of making proper use of civil penalties), and coerce Americans into conforming their behavior to satisfy social engineering objectives."

— mediamatters.org

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What a weird twist on this theme. We're more used to seeing liberal First Amendment groups fighting some safe-web-surfing law that the Heritage Foundation would want to use to comb indiscriminately through public library lending records, looking to see who rented a video with previews from Equus.

I wonder why this change of heart for HF? It's unlike them to protest a bill that seems to require a life sentence, up from 15 years, for the possession of child pornography.

"Unbeknownst to many, the Heritage Foundation produces the website Overcriminalized.com, which advocates the theory that 'as a result of rampant overcriminalization, trivial conduct is now often punished as a crime.'"

Child pornography is both creepy and dangerous but also subjective and easily able to be planted. Life sentences would need to be provided in the most extreme and conclusive cases.

"Overcriminalized.com sends out legislative update alerts to 'e-mail subscribers interested in legislation pending in Congress that could perpetuate the dangerous trend of criminalizing more and more social and economic activity.'"

But does this bill use a fine toothed comb, or can it haul hair-trigger victims of any kind of witch hunt off to jail and ruin their lives just because they clicked on the wrong link forwarded to them from some quadruple X porn freak?

Will we see Reaganesque penalties such as there were entire properties confiscated by state and municipal governments just because a pot seed was found there? Is the ACLU and Heritage Foundation in rare agreement over this one, or are they just fighting some arcane one-upmanship battle for a House seat or something?

It IS really fun to go, "See! those guys at the Heritage Foundation really ARE hypocritical child molesters!" But we also need an article delving into what's really going on, because that's probably pretty interesting, too.

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Vampires to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

2009-08-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

Governor Howard Dean, former head of the DNC, promises contested congressional Democratic primaries if the healthcare bill "doesn't pass with a public option" as the result of so much centrist Democratic back-peddling on healthcare reform.

Lou Dobbs is frightfully shaken by talk like this.

The vampire will see you now.

(HuffPo)

"I thought we had gotten rid of this left-wing pest for a while," Dobbs said. "But I guess he is just resurgent. He is a blood-sucking leftist. You have got to put a stake through his heart to stop this guy."

— Lou Dobbs,
The Lou Dobbs Show

Read more about Lou's vampire theories.

Pointing to GOP Senator Grassley and Sarah Palin's ominously evocative talk of DNC death panels and also to RNC chairman Michael Steele and Republican Senator DeMint's challenge to mold healthcare reform's failure into Obama's eventual Waterloo, Dean emphasizes the GOP's total disinterest in any plan at all... much less any thoughtful or honest debate

The only actual debate is going on between the administration and the so-called centrist Democrats, many of them newly elected to Congress.

"As he has done before, Dean criticized talk of substituting a government run program with co-operative insurance plans, calling the latter a fig leaf."

While the ghosts of protest past have come back more amendable to healthcare reform, some have gotten a LOT more scary.

More scary than Lou is that his kind of craziness is predictable, now that it has become all too common among once serious contibutors... now that even our most absurd jokes turn out to be political prophesy.

Again, something from a reader:

"And, by the way, do the Repubs (and Blu dawgs too) know about the Vampires and werewolves working at the National Health Service?

"Maybe you should put them onto this hot trail. It might get more press time even than O'B's birth certificate thang."

— DR S

It's like their Rapture-ready writers read our minds, but let's make it clear anyway. There ARE vampires at the NHS!

"The progressive watchdog group Media Matters jumped all over the comment, and like-minded bloggers followed suit. In private, Dean allies are fuming at Dobbs for a comment that not only equates the former Vermont Governor to a vampire, but raises the specter of violence during an emotionally charged health care debate."

But commie vampires are not all that's biting. From MoveOn.org, there's "Shark Week"

Meanwhile, at the healthcare town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Obama tried to deal with the persistent and arguable claim that his ultimate objective is a single-payer health care system by telling the audience, "For us to transition to a system like that I think would be too disruptive."

"He also disputed the notion that adding a government-run insurance plan into a menu of options from which people could pick would drive private insurers out of business, in effect making the system single-payer by default.

"As long as they have a good product and the government plan has to sustain itself through premiums and other non-tax revenue, private insurers should be able to compete with the government plan, Obama said."

IF people are smart, a government-run insurance plan would eventually, in effect, create a so-called single-payer system.

But... the word, single-payer, has been a disastrous misnomer for reform-minded public relations, one that mischaracterizes what's being done in countries where it's in place.

The word no longer benefits from being associated with those Xerox flyers taped to telephone poles throughout the '90s, creating the impression of a system that is actually run from the monthly gathering of indigenous cooperative granola rollers who meet to decide who will live and who must report to this panel the following month to die.

Something from the Jim Dean:

"His relentless promotion of debunked, racially charged conspiracy theories about President Obama's birth certificate have already seriously damaged CNN's credibility.

"Now, he's gone too far. He's inciting violence to stop Governor Dean from fighting for President Obama's health insurance option. That's not just un-American, it's irresponsible and dangerous."

— Jim Dean, undead brother of Howard Dean

Some single-payer systems are simply a large non-profit corporation, funded by a combination of taxes and premiums, much like Medicare is funded here, a fund that pays private service providers like doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, hospice, drug and equipment companies. And most so-called single-payer systems aren't even the only payer in town, because plenty of private insurance options exist in these so-called single-payer countries.

Progressive reform enthusiasts variously don't know this or have stupidly gotten lost in the lingo of pseudo-socialism that serves them no good in persuasive debate. It's remarkably embarrassing on top of being confoundingly self-defeating.

A better term to use would be federal-payer, and the insurance plan's optional use should be emphasized, because the progressive's teachable moment, the ideological hard-sell via hard-core indoctrination determined to persuade everyone about the socialist efficiencies and equality of the single-payer system is exactly what scares people. The first thing that natural proponents of single-payer need to face is the fact that the system isn't even what they think it is, and then devise one that's appealing to American sensibilities, instead of thinking it's only a matter of mass, systematic re-education before people see the light.

"In 1996, when he was running for the state Senate in Illinois, Obama was asked on a questionnaire whether he supported a single-payer health plan. The response was, 'Yes in principle.'"

Branding is everything, and the customized and modern single-payer systems working so well in other countries haven't been properly evaluated or explained to American healthcare reformers, much less the American people. SiCKO has been the only effective teaching tool, but its purpose served only to show that people are happy with their system, not the interesting differences between systems around the world.

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PhEE, PhIE, PhOE PhARMA

2009-08-08T23:54:00.000-07:00

PhARMA's set to spend $150 million pushing healthcare reform this fall, but before we begin to mock that, let's put it in perspective.

Comparison shopping? PhARMA's holding a sale.

(HuffPo)

"By comparison, President Obama’s presidential campaign spent about $236 million on television commercials while the campaign of the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, spent about $126 million."

— David D. KirkPatrick,
NYTimes

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AMERICA, this day in history: Along with the AMA and the nurses association, plus PhARMA and 60% of the American people, Obama's got the hospitals and insurance companies backed up in the corner... with birth certificate conspiracy goons and goose-booting pantaloon troops from the 9/12 BOO! movement... all of them arguing the finer points of apocalyptic birther theory.

"Few expect the opponents of the health care overhaul to muster as much advertising muscle as its backers, including sympathetic business groups, labor unions and ideological allies. The drug makers stand to gain millions of new customers from the expansion of health care coverage."

Through two tediously eerie years, tenaciously trying all that any kook can cough up, Glenn Beck's Clamity Players have nothing but this laughably forged birth certificate from a country that didn't even exist at the time of Obama's birth. That's pretty much the basis of their plan to reform healthcare, but how do they keep a DOA like that alive?

Hearing of euthanasia and rumor of euthanasia, an ugly mob with pitchforks are goaded by the Faux Noose-Limbaugh-Drudge echo network, into mimicking verbaim mockery that Steve Doocy introduces to his morning listener to-do lists each day.

Something from the PhORSES Mouth:

"Our board has agreed to make a significant investment in support of comprehensive reform,” he said. 'Our August plan is pretty much in place, but we have not finalized all the details of the fall campaign.'"

— Ken Johnson, spokesman for PhRMA

Meanwhile, there's the 9/12ers emailing prophetic doomsday theory to our mothers regarding the imminent outbreak of civil war, apocalyptic birther rumor, imploring that we stock up on ammo, medicine, and begin a plan to ration food and generally weather in for the Rapture.

That's the plan.

Meanwhile, on the left, things are just as circumspect, although from there the fascists could be just about anybody... not only the fascists.

Robert Reich asks that "Democrats and progressives should ask themselves how they'll feel when a Republican White House cuts such deals to advance its own legislative priorities."

Quid quo pro? The Pros here are Big Pharma.

(Zach Trenholm, Salon)

"I'm a strong supporter of universal health insurance, and a fan of the Obama administration. But I'm appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying arm to buy their support."

— Robert Reich, Salon

Read more Robert Reich.

Although I generally agree with Bobby, he's a little bit scattered in his message, saying at first that it's 1994 all over again but then pointing out that it's not. If, in the first case, it were the other way around, if Obama promised to give the pharmaceutical industry $80 billion in exchange for its effort to stop reform, THAT would be business as usual.

Something from Reich's Readers:

"And it’s a nebulous $80B. They could raise prices by $80B and then roll them back and claim savings. Sweet."

— One of Reiche's readers

Last time, the prescription bill GAVE $1.2 trillion to the industry... instead of taking $80 billion from them... but Reich is right; it's undemocratic if the details are not publically available, "when an industry gets secret concessions out of the White House in return for a promise to lend the industry's support to a key piece of legislation.

"That's called extortion: An industry is using its capacity to threaten or prevent legislation as a means of altering that legislation for its own benefit. And it's doing so at the highest reaches of our government, in the office of the president."

But... because he had that "front-row seat in 1994 when Big Pharma and the rest of the health-industry complex went to battle against reform," Reich can tell us firsthand "how big and effective the onslaught can be". He says, "I appreciate Big Pharma's support this time around, and I like it that the industry is doing the reverse of what it did last time, and airing ads to persuade the public of the rightness of the White House's effort."

Reich doesn't want to be puritanical about it, because the White House deal with Big PhARMA may be "a necessary step to get anything resembling universal health insurance," but if that's the case, he says, "our democracy is in terrible shape.

He may be more optimistic than I am, maybe even more naïve, to think we're not already that far gone. I believe we are, and the reception reform has had in the Senate is indicative of it, especially after they had total political cover after the election to pass reform along the lines of what was debated during the 2008 election.

As much as this deal has been laid at Obama's feet, that's not the way the story was told. The agreement was reached, first, with the Senate.

"Mr. Tauzin said the administration had approached him to negotiate. 'They wanted a big player to come in and set the bar for everybody else,' he said. He said the White House had directed him to negotiate with Senator Max Baucus, the business-friendly Montana Democrat who leads the Senate Finance Committee.

"Mr. Tauzin said the White House had tracked the negotiations throughout, assenting to decisions to move away from ideas like the government negotiation of prices or the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada. The $80 billion in savings would be over a 10-year period. '80 billion is the max, no more or less,' he said. 'Adding other stuff changes the deal.'"

"After reaching an agreement with Mr. Baucus, Mr. Tauzin said, he met twice at the White House with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff; Mr. Messina, his deputy; and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the aide overseeing the health care overhaul, to confirm the administration’s support for the terms."

Democratic principles aside, such as they are for the moment, if their deal is that the administration, in exchange for industry support for reform, will not push Congress for a bigger discount than $80 billion from PhARMA... I'm not all that outraged. The industry's support is virtually priceless. If the LA Times version of the story, that PhARMA received "a White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining," what does it mean to forswear?

If in exchange for industry support the administration promised to lobby against a bigger discount than $80 billion from PhARMA, then I'm more specifically bothered.

If in exchange for industry support the administration promised to VETO any legislation that is more tough than $80 billion on PhARMA, then I'm inconsolably bothered... that is UNLESS my bottom-of-the-barrel requirement is met, a federal-payer health care plan on par with federal employee benefits... one that is blind to pre-existing conditions.

I don't even really care what the private industry does if there is my option. If legislation also closes the prescription donut hole, in addition to providing my blind federal-payer plan, I might get over feeling sold out.

Is that the same as selling out?

And Dr. S chides:

"...incredible naivety ...does he really think that they COULD raise prices by $80 billion, rather than that they WILL raise them by 100, 150, 200 or more... what the heck, and then reduce them by $80. Not rocket science.

"If Big Pharm is bankrolling the pro Obama care plan, why should WE then give money or support to it too?"

— Dr. S

If Big Pharm is bankrolling the pro Obama care plan, why should WE then give money or support to it too?

For some reason, the proprietor class is steadfast in the belief that people should pay for things, and we see it even in shady shenanigans like these, where they fake this largess while passing the cost of it onto us. Thus, someone else is always going to absorb this cost, either through taxes, fees, premiums, penalties, or while paying for products at the point of sale.

Former Gov. Sarah Palin stirred up controversy last week by suggesting on her Facebook page that people like her parents and Down syndrome son might have to appear before 'Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

And we keep arguing about these things, every time someone moves a shell, from tax, to fee, to premiums, then to penalties, and now at the cash register, again and again, to dispel the latest constituents outraged that they should pay for healthcare reform. The buck only stops at the consumer, who again screams for real reform.

The end user is targeted, always, as the long-tail, deep pocket, whether we miss the shady details of a deal like this or openly gloat over record jury awards for the pain and suffering cause by industry malpractice. The cost is ALWAYS passed down. Where else would the money come from, except the investors, who, arguably, could solve all our problems by investing in social conscience?

Read more from Robert Reich at Salon.

Keep Your Damn Socialist Hands Off My Medicare!

2009-08-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

Rioting for the LORD?

(HuffPo)

"Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the 'Brooks Brothers riot' in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House.

"Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington."

— Paul Krugman, NYTimes

Read More.

The GOP of the 1980s had their goose-stepping obsession with the 1950s, not realizing that particular history ended in a terrible recession that drove the Republicans out of power and the country running into Kennedy's arms.

"There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled 'Freedom of Speech,' depicting an idealized American town meeting.

"The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s 'Four Freedoms,' shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind."

Today's Neandercons are just as obsessed with the 1980s, and they seem to be also very unaware that three deregulated Reaganomic recessions drove the party right back out of power.

"That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting "This is America!" — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform."

Sometime around 2020... after America has forgotten these absurdities... the reconstituted Republican Party will look back at the 2000s as the last greatest apex of GOP hegemony, their hey day, never remembering it's exactly what drove the whole world to near depression... and completely totaled America's moral standing around the globe.

There's no stopping the fact that enough of us are going to forget it.

You can't make this stuff up:

"There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands."

— Krugman

We've seen it all before, and we'll see it all again, only bigger and much more dangerous next time... because Americans will forget about these Faux Noose brown shirts and their bootjack hooliganism.

Ultimately, many of us are to blame, even as we avoid Faux Noose, because we consume plenty of other Murdoch products that keep his rope swinging, shows like the Simpsons...
Lie to Me
Arrested Development
King of the Hill
Doll house
Fringe
House
Life on Mars
That '70s Show
Fire Fly
Bones
MADtv
Futurama
Buffy
Rescue Me
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Prison Break
X-Files
Glee
Family Guy
The Wrestler
Secret Life of Bees
Slumdog Millionaire
X-Men
Fast Food Nation
Ice Age
Borat
Notes on a Scandal
Once
Marley and Me
Juno
The Savages
Waitress
Bride Wars
Little Miss Sunshine
The Darjeeling Limited
28 Days Later
The Last King of Scotland
Garden State
Night at the Museum
(500) Days of Summer
Thank You For Smoking
Millions
Sideways
Kinsey
Waking Life
Boys Don't Cry

...and so on and so forth.

Read More.

Looking for Romance Online? Try the Sex Offender List.

2009-08-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

Some of the most romantic and sporting people are to be found there... only because they were goofing around.

Peeing on a tree is s sexual offense?

(Noma Barr, The Economist)

"At least five states required men to register as sex offenders if they were caught visiting prostitutes. At least 13 required it for urinating in public. No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered streakers."

— The Economist

Read More.

Out of 17,000 registered sex offenders in Georgia, a very small number, just over 100, are classified as "predators", which means they have a compulsion to commit sex offences.

Only five percent, 850, were clearly dangerous, while 35% were potentially threatening and 65% pose little threat at all.

"ONE day in 1996 the lights went off in a classroom in Georgia so that the students could watch a video. Wendy Whitaker, a 17-year-old pupil at the time, was sitting near the back. The boy next to her suggested that, since it was dark, she could perform oral sex on him without anyone noticing. She obliged. And that single teenage fumble wrecked her life.

"Her classmate was three weeks shy of his 16th birthday. That made Ms Whitaker a criminal."

Thoughtful, serious people see the obvious problem. These lists are only useful to people who require even the least offensive people to be judged beneath them.

When making out at lovers lane with your high school sweetheart, peeing urgently in public, or skinny-dipping on a dare is a felonious crime, the list of offenders becomes a jumble of gross misinformation only the panicked and self-righteous abide.

Something from the commentariat:

"I have no sympathy for serious offenders, and support the harsh penalties meant to keep potential victims out of their immediate reach. However, the article is spot on with regards to minor infractions that result in the perpetrator being placed on a sex offender registry.

"Is some idiot drunk who gets caught taking a whizz in a street alley really on an equally low level with a child rapist? What's the point of this list when there is no way of telling if the guy living down the road is a child molester or some goof who streaked at a football game?"

— Dirk Diggler

Because "every lawmaker who wants to sound tough on sex offenders has to propose a law tougher than the one enacted by the last politician who wanted to sound tough," we're locking up and marking for life people who went streaking, those who couldn't wait to pee at home. Teenagers are criminally tainted for life... socially ostracized after having had sex with each other.

"Terry Norris of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association cites a man who was convicted of statutory rape two decades ago for having consensual sex with his high-school sweetheart, to whom he is now married."

The Rapture-ready, sex-panic police are one thing, but it takes more than just them to incite the fear in our lawmakers, who resort to legislative over-kill that ruins the lives of someone as innocent as your childhood sweetheart or as harmless as a frat-house buddy peeing on the side of a tree.

Read More.

The Mob Squab

2009-08-05T01:04:00.000-07:00

Losing it.

(YouTube)

"I find this ad a little risky.... is it wise to accuse Republicans of being mobs in the streets? Are they? Or is it more the annoying talk show people."

— DR S

See more.

I agree; it's a risky shot... in the context of standard DNC consultancy, a sensibility which normally hopes more than anything to NOT offend the opposition's constituency.

It's a very current media event in which small hoards of particularly white and peculiarly old people are showing up at a few town hall meetings and shouting down discussion of anything except Obama's birth certificate or dooms-day conspiracy scenarios of mass-euthanasia of senior citizens.

"Throughout the summer, we have been reaching out to Floridians to engage in an important debate on the future our health care system. We have heard story after story from people who are struggling to get the care they need.

"Recently, their thoughtful discussions are being interrupted by angry mobs - well funded and organized by Washington special interests - attempting to drown out the voices of the hard-working Floridians who are desperate for health insurance reform."

This mob-like belligerence is a direct export of the violence-laced invective we saw at McCain-Palin campaign rallies last fall.

The mob mentality is fomented by Faux Noose demagoguery, the inflammatory and paranoid social commentary that you mentioned, and it's facilitated by the medical industrial complex and public relations consultants who are aptly whipping the media into a wild frenzy of sensationalistic coverage that magnifies a relatively small, goaded fringe of anti-reform-naysayers into this preposterously outsized pseudo-movement.

Something from the Commentariat:

"My question is why were anti-war protesters hauled out of bush's town halls as soon as they stood up (if they were even allowed in in the first place) while these right wing corporate thugs are allowed to shout down congressmen and their constituants who actually want to have a meaningful discussion? For people who claim to be lovers of freedom and democracy, they sure do seem to hate it in action."

— Salviati137

Meanwhile, through manipulation of poll reporting, a mischaracterization abided by the press (because the perception of cultural conflict sells advertising revenue) people believe that there is rampant disapproval of creatively radical reform, even though internal Republican polling clearly shows that most people support both a strong public option AND a competitive federal payer, both available in a national package sold in a mixed public-commercial market.

Instead of depending on a naively well-meaning constituency to write this bogus demonstration off as total nonsense that no one we know would really buy into, this DNC ad is fighting back at a guerilla media manipulation campaign by characterizing it as lunacy, right when the freak show launches. The reformers can't afford to sleep through August.

The DNC wastes no time, because congressmen use this whipped-up, faux controversy as their excuse to side with the corporate interests who have already bought them off. It's ALL about having that plausible excuse, this imaginary political cover... nothing to do with truth... and the DNC aims to neutralize that preposterous claim. It's ad hominem, but the right-wing invites it by being so freaky.

Again, from the reader:

— DR S

By your command...

Back to the pitchfork weilding mob... I see your point, that it seems like an over-the-top tactical reaction to call these people lunatics, but I think the DNC has made the strategic judgment that the Republican core has been reduced to its minimal, whacky, Rapture-ready constituency, that reformist forces MUST act with an unorthodox immediacy, before the center-right campaign is able to attract that tragically flimsy-minded sub-set of the white American demographic who unconsciously believes they can afford to side with the wittiest, more entertaining contestant... in a contest that has been won by the RNC, up until recently, when the GOP core totally lost its snarky sense of humor... all because they pathologically loathe the notion of electing a black man as president.

The DNC is dispensing with conventional Democratic wisdom... acting in the moment... and baiting these racist dooms-day conspiracy zealots into reacting with even more nuttiness, with historically fanatical and violence-laced social-conservative whackery, with the anger and palpable meanness that totally failed McCain-Palin in 2008.

See more of Being Human at YouTube.

The More Things Stay the Same

2009-08-04T12:33:00.000-07:00

Bill Myers reminds us that "Wendell Potter was here a few weeks ago to tell an insider's story of how the health insurance industry 'puts profits before patients.' Your response bowled us over." A blogger at Talking Points Memo summed it up:

More Moyers, please

(PBS)

"I beg everyone who reads this and clicks onto the link to send it on to everyone you know. Send it to your congressmen, your governors, your legislatures, the White House.

"Whatever it takes. This is a television event too important to let die..."

— Ramona, TPM

Watch the re-broadcast at PBS.

Like a prophet, Wendell Potter told us how the insurance industry would attack the debate that was set to take place in D.C. this summer. As if on cue, obviously reading from the strategy paper that Potter revealed, the industry struck back at healthcare reform that they have publicly pretended to support.

Here's the original interview.

Potter tells Moyers that he began his transformation to corporate whistleblower after attending a "health care expedition," a makeshift health clinic set up at a fairgrounds

Something from the witness:

"It was absolutely stunning. When I walked through the fairground gates, I saw hundreds of people lined up, in the rain. It was raining that day. Lined up, waiting to get care, in animal stalls. Animal stalls."

— Wendel Potter,
former head of CIGNA Public Relations

Meanwhile, chronicling a disturbing aspect of industry lobbying, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is taking names of well-placed congressmen taking multi-million dollar bribes to do the corporate medical industrial complex's bidding, instead of representing the interests of more corporeal constituents.

Thanks to MSNBC and Bill Moyers for fearless name-calling.

Watch the Moyers re-broadcast at PBS.

Wolffe at the Door

2009-08-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald sullies the reputation of Newsweek reporter and frequent NBC commentator, Richard Wolffe, pointing out that he's a stratgist in his night job at Public Strategies Inc., putting the man's stylish Euro-vampire charms into darker context.

I'll huff... and I'll puff.

(HuffPo)

"Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover.

"This is a conflict so severe that it's incurable by disclosure: who wouldn't realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political commentators? But the fact that they don't even bother to disclose that just serves to illustrate how non-existent is the line between corporate interests and 'news reporting' in the United States."

— Glenn Greenwald, Salon blogger

Read More.

I've always liked Wolffe and was glad to see him show up on TV. I would read anything that had his name on it, but lately he has sounded a little slick, less journalistic, more sensationalistic, and it was somewhat troubling to be losing touch with his presumably trust-worthy political insight on the basis of style.

"NBC News has admitted an error in failing to disclose Wolffe's ties, telling Politico, 'We should have disclosed Richard's connection to Public Strategies. We will do so in the future.' The spokesman added, 'Richard has assured us that he does not offer commentary about any of his clients or their interests.'

"Richard Wolffe himself is not registered to lobby, so there are no records of which accounts he works for the firm."

This more serious revelation is disappointing, on the one hand, but it's heartening to see such cannibalistic housecleaning on the (somewhat) progressive political opinion scene. Heaping kudos to Glenn Greenwald and Salon.

Public Strategies Inc. in their own words:

"Much of our practice involves orchestrating high-stakes corporate campaigns and responding to crises. We also help forward-thinking companies to assess public opinion and risk, leading to strategies for influencing how they are perceived and systems for managing uncertainty. And clients often seek our help in building their own organizational capabilities or in managing entire functions such as government relations or employee communications on a day-to-day basis."

One wonders how they'll handle this brouhahah, but they're pretty proud about their part in current debacles, often as the cleaning team:

http://www.pstrategies.com/case_industry_coalition.php

http://www.pstrategies.com/case_prod_liability.php

Most notably: http://www.pstrategies.com/case_media_intelligence.php

Even in their own words, it's disconcerting.

Something from the Suits:

"Public strategies came through for us in total and in a hurry. They came into a powerful charged situation and masterfully helped us rein in. I'd call them again in a crisis, absolutely"

— Saul Solomon, General Counsel, Bridgestone/Firestone

For a major tire manufacturer, undergoing the largest tire recall in U.S. history, also facing possible punitive legislation and constricting regulations comes away that happy, their new-found lobbyist has GOT to be good.

Read More.

So-called Pilot's Healthcare "Analysis" Debunked

2009-08-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

Another "euthanasia order" debunked.

(Snopes)

"Your thoughts?

"This looked like something you would like to sink your research teeth into."

— A frequent reader

Pre-bunking here.

Another anti-reform chain email?

I'll take a whack at it.

The bill is dated July 14, 2009, a long time ago, by congressional standards. The bill that was just passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday July 31st isn't the same bill we're looking at here:

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3200ih.txt.pdf

That committee made significant changes to the legislation. Then there's the Senate version, too, so this isn't the "new" healthcare bill or the newest, and it's not even the only one.

The very last item on the list, "Should the government be requiring seniors to attend end of life counseling?" has been thoroughly debunked, so has the item referred to below: Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient's health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.

The so-called end-of-life orders mentioned in the legislation aren't issued by the government. They're the usual written orders made by a senior citizen or anyone else while writing up his or her DNR, living-will, or medical power of attorney.

AARP has responded to these healthcare reform scare tactics, calling them rife with gross, cruel distortions".

Page 16: Eliminates the choice to purchase private health insurance!

This is section 102 of Title 1, which defines standards for "qualified plans". What's a qualified plan? Qualified for what? Qualified only under this bill? Qualified only for the exchange? Qualified to exist at all? The only limitation I see is that all individual plans (strictly private plans, as opposed to the public option and the enviable federal-employee-like plan), must be sold through the healthcare exchange. Employer plans and group plans may be offered outside of the exchange.

Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!

This is not an audit and doesn't mention auditing "all employers". It's a study to determine "The risk of self-insured employers not being able to pay obligations or otherwise becoming financially insolvent." It's similar to the problem AIG suffered, writing insurance plans above and beyond its ability to pay out. This sounds like a worthy study, and the email authors effort to call it "a mandated audit of all employers" is disingenuous.

Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!

Section 122, defining essential benefits, minimum services allowable, limitations on cost sharing (co-payments). I don't see any limitations on benefits, only limitations on co-payments on the basic plans as opposed to the enhanced plan and premium plans.

Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process).

Section 123 established the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, chaired by the Surgeon General, members appointed by the president and the Comptroller. They only make recommendations about benefits that may be offered in various plans, but they are not responsible for the adoption of such standards. There is no mention of what the email author refers to as an appeals process, but public input is required in the committee's deliberations. Also, these benefits will be offered through an insurer, so the email author's suggestion that they are not is incorrect.

Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.

So which is it? Is it the above committee who decided how you will die or this commissioner of another committee who decides how you will die?

The email author isn't being honest about who decides how you will die. Did you know that in almost all cases of airplane crashed a pilot was behind the wheel? Why would we take their word about killing people? I'm going to stop here because the email is obviously an exercise in cherry-picking terms that can be disingenuously misinterpreted in the most scary way, much like other fear-mongering emails that have been traced back to the usual suspects purporting to be ordinary people simply concerned about your well-being.

Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.

Okay, I couldn't help it. Just one more. This section says "all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services."

Nowhere does it say that all non-US citizens illegal or not will be provided with free healthcare services.

By the way, if as a US citizen you injured yourself in the UK, you'd be treated for free, instead of being rejected by your insurance plan for being in an out of plan emergency room. Would you like that or to die in an ambulance your family wouldn't be able to afford after it spent hours circling the city looking for the best place to dump your body?

Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.

This is addictively fun. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Poor fish... new barrel.

This section says that insurance policies "may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card," not that everyone will be issued a national ID card.

HOWEVER... a few sections up in Section 2746, the bill specifically trounce the email author's unfounded claim that the committee and/or the commissioner mentioned above will have the final say.

"If a health insurance issuer determines to rescind health insurance coverage for an individual in the individual market, before such rescission may take effect the issuer shall provide the individual with notice of such proposed rescission and an opportunity for a review of such determination by an independent, external third party under procedures... If the individual requests such review by an independent, external third party of a rescission of health insurance coverage, the coverage shall remain in effect until such third party determines that the coverage may be rescinded."

Okay, now I'm going to quit. No really, I can stop any time I want, but that doesn't mean I don't have the choice to do it again anytime I like. It'sa Merica, after all

Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

Sigh...This establishes as a minimum standard that payment can be made with your debit or credit card through electronic banking. Cash payment is not required, nor should it be, or should it be? I always forget, but I'd hate it if the emergency room wouldn't take anything but cash on demand.

Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans.

This program is actually available to ALL employment-based plans participating in a particular program. Employers participate in this plan (or not!) by making financial contributions to the plan. It DOES seem to be a form of federal health insurance for retirees supported by the participating employer's voluntary contributions.

By the way, there's also... wait for it... an appeals process so employers can... appeal decisions. Here, there IS an actual audit of claims data of participating employer-based plans. Nowhere, though, are "union retirees" or "community organizers" mentioned. The email authors referral to union retirees and community organizers is preposterous. Community organizer health plans? PuLeeeeze! It's SUCH a coded terminology meant to freak Republicans out, because we all know "community organizers" are uppity black people running for president, or worse... ACORN! This is one of the more embarrassing claims.

Seriously, the next time you fly, you should worry whether this so-called pilot is flying your plane, but I suspect that if Captain Scully had never safely landed the plane in the Hudson River we'd be reading this same exact email from a purported fireman instead. Beware of so-called analysis from anonymous members of the latest heroic profession.

If the first ten items are demonstrable misinterpretations, it doesn't bode well for the rest. I'd like to look at them too, but you get the disingenuous gist of it.

That's not to say I don't have some concerns.

As shrill and hysterical as these anti-reform nuts sound, the administration has given them something to hang their hat on when officials talk about things like end-of-life options... speaking somewhat briefly... with the sense that most people understand what they mean. But many people don't know what a DNR, a living-will, or a medical power of attorney is. They hear "end-of-life order" and believe the order is coming from someone else.

At that press conference on ABC a few weeks ago, there was the woman whose 100 year old mother lived to be 105 instead of accepting the initial doctor's recommendation that there was little hope. The daughter asked Obama if her mother's care would have been rejected under healthcare reform. Instead of saying Yes or No and Here's why... Obama started explaining the concept of pointless end of life care, leaving a very odd impression that this particular woman wouldn't have gotten the life-extending care.

Unless they REALLY mean the doctor and patient don't have a say, they REALLY need to make it clear that the best-practices guidelines they're talking about aren't written in cold, Vulcan stone.

In the context of pointless end-of-life options... on the subject of procedures that aren't going to benefit the patient as much as they offer dubious hope... reformers have spoken in somewhat short, curt terms about a delicate, nuanced, and frightening subject... giving the nuts, anti-reform lobbyists, and activists this opening.

Something from a frequent reader:

From: anonymousMouse
Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 5:28 AM
Subject: Fwd: Analysis of New Healthcare Bill (Must Read!)

Your thoughts?

This looked like something you would like to sink your research teeth into.

Now would be a good time to let our elected representatives know how we feel about this legislation.

One of the pilots I fly with actually read the proposed Healthcare Bill and put this summary together. Regardless of your political persuasion, we should all be telling every elected official we can NOT to endorse this madness. (There's a link to a pdf copy of the entire bill if you want to check the accuracy of this summary.)

Read the entire proposed Healthcare Bill (you will be more qualified than congressional representatives).

Click on the following link. (It takes a few minutes to open the file.)

HR2300.pdf http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3200ih.txt.pdf

Here are a few highlights of some problems with the healthcare bill.

These problems highlight the reason every bill must be read by the American people before they are signed. (if these points don't get you upset, please check your pulse and call 911):

Disclaimer: This summary was sent from a colleague. We encourage you to conduct additional research on your own.

Page 16: Eliminates the choice to purchase private health insurance!

Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!

Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!

Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)

Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.

Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.

Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.

Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans.

Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.

Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)

Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens

Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.

Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.

Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.

Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.

Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.

Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.

Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll

Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll

Page 167: Any individual who doesnt' have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.

Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).

Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.
Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected."

Page 241: Doctors: no matter what speciality you have, you'll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)

Page 253: Government sets value of doctors' time, their professional judgment, etc.

Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.

Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.

Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!

Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.

Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.

Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies!

Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.

Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.

Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.

Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.

Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).
Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?
Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.

Page 425: Goverment provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.
Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.
Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient's health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.

Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.
Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services.
Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations.
Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.
Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.

Talk to Your Family, Friends, Neighbors & Co-Workers

You must talk to people about this. We need to get as many people informed about this as possible. Here are a few key points:

This issue is not Republican vs. Democrat. It is government vs. individual rights.

"What's the proper role of Government in our lives?"

"Do we really want the government making decisions for us that should be between me and my doctor?"

"Should the government be eliminating personal health insurance plans?"

"Should the government be requiring seniors to attend 'end of life counseling'?"

— A frequent reader

Read nother debunking here.

The Lesson's in There Somewhere

2009-08-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

Macho, macho man... I drink the beer of a macho man.

(HuffPo)

"Beer won't cool the fury of those who can't accept the reality that America's racial profile will no longer reflect their own."

— Frank Rich, NYTimes

Read more at the NYTimes

While that's a great point, here's the Pièce de résistance: "Threatened white elites try to mask their own anxieties by patronizingly adopting working-class whites as their pet political surrogates: Joe the Plumber, New Haven firemen, a Cambridge police officer. Call it Village People populism."

"Sometimes the most revealing expressions of this resentment emerge in juvenile asides — Bill Kristol (on The Weekly Standard’s blog) ridiculing Gates for writing a flowery travel magazine article about his privileged vacation home of Martha's Vineyard, or Heather MacDonald (in National Review) mocking Gates as a 'limousine liberal' for his supposedly hypocritical admission that he has a 'regular car service' and a 'regular driver' to fetch him at the airport. Who does Henry Louis Gates Jr. think he is, William F. Buckley Jr.?"

More confounding to Americans than race is the teachable moment on class. The inner hope of so many of us to make it big on American Idol, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and YouTube... or whatever the modern equivalent for your particular ship coming in suddenly, if not unaccountably... it's a guilty pleasure that obliterates our sympathy for those who are unaccountably trampled in the ruthlessly Darwinist race to be voted the favorite.

Even those with little hope of ever making it are resentful of those who cry foul, and the haves use this enter-class hostility to their advantage againt the have-nots.

Read more Frink Rich at the NYTimes

Shoot me: I Like the Status Quo

2009-08-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Bite your tongue, but don't expect any pity.

(HuffPo)

"I'm with that woman who wrote the president complaining about "socialized medicine" and added: "Now keep your hands off my Medicare." That's the spirit!"

— Jonathan Alter, Newsweek

Read More.

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter sums up just about everything that's wrong with health insurance as is, and makes the case for keeping things just the way they are.

Alter is just joshing, but August will be rife with preposterous truthiness and regrettably factish horror stores about Canadians dying in droves as the Mounties gun them down at the border, while the Mounties, themselves, are trying to escape to America to get honest to goodness healthcare.

"Back in the day, they had a word for competition. A bad word. They called it capitalism. FedEx versus the U.S. Postal Service, CNN versus PBS—just because it's government-backed doesn't mean you can't compete against it. If they believed in capitalism, the insurance companies would join the fray and compete."

By the way, has anyone ever asked how you get treatment in the US with Canadian health insurance? That's pretty good health insurance, by US insurance standards, and let's keep in mind that it's the Americans who are being denied affordable Canadian pharmaceuticals... by the PhARMA suits lobbying our own governement.

Something from the commentariat:

"If I really cannot afford the $1,000 per month mandatory pay associated with most of these bills and move to Italy or Nicaragua, I'll eventually lose my passport - on these mandatory pay things they hook it all up to your annual tax forms, travel docs, etc. It's kind of scary. And I've looked at the numbers, I don't qualify for public option."

— barriosbabe

The private insurance industry dosn't qualify for the public facts. The House bill caps premiums at 10% of income per household, per year, meaning you'd have to make, $100,000 a year to pay $1000 per month AND that's a cap, not a mandate, one preventing the insurance company from charging you MORE than 10%.

That's $250 a month for someone making $30,000 a year. Meanwhile... people are going bankrupt, today, with 30% premiums that were canceled when they got sick.

The truth people are telling is much more ruthless than the fictions you can make up.

Read More.

Imagine the Brouhaha...

2009-07-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

...if Obama had picked the micro-brew and the cop had taken the Budweiser.

Lites... Camera... Action? Not so much.

(HuffPo)

"The White House meeting drew such media interest that press secretary Robert Gibbs said he looked forward to facing no more questions about what beers each man would drink. For the record, it was Bud Light for Obama, Sam Adams Light for Gates, Blue Moon for Crowley and nonalcoholic Buckler for Biden."

— Ben Feller, AP

Read More.

Instead, Obama was stuck choking down dishwater mixed with rubbing alcohol, just to avoid the Dijon mustard backlash from the arugula-phobes on the right.

If Obama had ordered a faux-Belgian brew with an orange slice on the side, he would have been pilloried on the right by the anti-endive police and the Chablis-and-brie-conspiracy crazies.

"Hopefully, instead of ginning up anger and hyperbole everybody can just spend a little bit of time with some self-reflection and recognizing that other people have different points of view."

I would have expected Biden to go with vodka on the rocks, and I wonder if he doesn't drink or if the event planners hope to shift the center of the culture war by throwing in this not-so-obvious pick.

From the Commentariat:

"Bottom line to me is, Obama should have kept his opinion (which was all it was as he had no facts) to himself and should realize that the POTUS does not need to involve himself in a low level city problem."

— zipowitz

The POTUS does not need to involve himself in a low level city problem?

Tell that to Terri Schiavo, who got an act of the Republican congress and the GOP president's opinion all up in her business.

A GOP butt-in-ski is perfectly fine for the FOX-Limbaugh-Drudge echo-network when a wedge issue is just what is needed to get their guy reelected, but Obama's out of line for answering the question when he's asked about a friend to whom he had just spoken.

I see.

Obama was wrong for distracting the press from the healthcare debate, which he arguably may have intended to do, since negotiations were falling apart.

Read More.

I DO Sense an Intelligent Design at Work

2009-07-30T23:51:00.000-07:00

How could nature have chaotically created William Shatner and Sarah Palin, seeming unrelated, and yet obviously cosmically bound.

And what about me, here, having happened, too, and having been obsessed, first with him and then with her?

See More at NBC.

It Takes a Villain

2009-07-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

As long as the healthcare co-ops are allowed to be big enough to make a difference through bargaining power, the idea fits nicely with our idea to turn the Democratic Party into a massive national healthcare union that puts its money where its mouth is and provides healthcare for its members.

It takes a villain.

(HuffPo)

"They are the villains in this. They have been part of the problem in a major way," Pelosi said of the insurance industry after her weekly press conference. "It's almost immoral, what they are doing," she said, referring to industry lobbying against a public insurance plan option."

— Nancy Pelosi

Read More.

It's written on a napkin somewhere... we were brainstorming a couple of years ago about a private solution to the current mess. We were like, "Hey man. get this...no really... the political parties should stop fighting about healthcare, and just build the damn system each of them wants for themselves.

"Offer a healthcare policy as a benefit of party membership. Upwards of one hundred million democrats could solve the healthcare problem for its membership... a DYI co-op... a massive healthcare union with enormous bargaining power. Poor religious conservative Republicans without healthcare would go, 'Gawd damn! I want that!'"

"They've had a good thing going for a long time at the expense of the American people and the health of our country," she said, adding that it will be tough to keep them from getting their way. "This is the fight of our lives."

We were inspired, ironically, by Hezbollah and Hamas, who attract members, not by blowing up Zionists, but by providing social services like medical care, school, food, and education. Even IF that's just their propaganda, it's a pretty good idea.

"Of course, they've been immoral all along. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening, and the public has to know about it."

We support a fully funded public option and a federal-payer, too, but we're also DIY types who think the DNC could put up or shut up when it comes to this subject and organize what might be the largest pool the insurance industry has ever had to face in America.

"I am for the strongest possible public option," she said. The Senate health committee bill "is one that I think would be okay. It's not my preference. My preference is a stronger bill. But it meets the test of having an effective public option."

Senator Kent Conrad's co-op plan is geographic, and we're leery of geographic pools, because insurance companies have been known to discriminate against particular zip codes, so Conrad's co-ops should not be rejected as a gateway, out of hand, but they should be rolled in with Obama's healthcare exchange, the fully-funded public option, the federal payer, and for-profit commercial offers.

Something from a reader:

"I have ALWAYS thought one of your most unfailingly brilliant of all unfailingly brilliant ideas was to have the DEMS do this. Maybe now is the time!!! HOWEVER, would their big corp fat cats ever let them? Or the blue dogs? Between fat cats and blue dogs what are we to do? What about having the Green Party or the Libertarians do it instead?

— Dr. S.

Isn't it about buying in bulk? The Greens and (to some extent) the Libertarian parties might be more philosophically inclined to do this... but does either party have enough members to have the impact that even a quarter of the Democratic Party would have?

Aside from that, isn't it a surprise that conservative Democrats, Blue Dogs and fat cats... the fat blue cats... are using the word co-op? It smacks of leftist cooperative grocers, checkers, stockers, and produce handlers who own the building, including the artists' live-work lofts up above the store. It's such ideologically loaded socialist term.

Read More.

Snopes: Betsy McCaughey's a Liar

2009-07-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

For those of you who may have received the VERY scary email insisting that the healthcare reform bill mandates euthanasia counseling for seniors every five years... sigh... such a horrible idea is obviously FALSE, according to snopes.com.

Snopes calls "euthanasia counceling" false,

(Snopes)

"She describes this term as 'code' for 'limiting care based on a patient’s age.'

In fact the term for that is 'age rating,' a practice used by insurance companies to discriminate against older Americans against which AARP is vigorously fighting, and we look forward to her next column to help the cause.

"Comparative effectiveness research, on the other hand, is a technical term that just means giving doctors and patients the ability to compare different kinds of treatments to find out which one works best for which patient."

— AARP

Read more from Snopes.com.

What this Betsy McCaughey lady describes as forced euthanasia on Fred Thomson's radio show is really nothing more unusual than Medicare paying for a senior's consultation with their doctor about the usual stuff related to your end of life care, your DNR, medical power of attorney. This measure ensures that Medicare pays for consultations your family may have with your doctor when you're unable to do so.

AARP responds to McCaughey' healthcare reform scare tactics, calling her comments "rife with gross, cruel distortions".

"Betsy McCaughey’s recent commentary on health care reform in various media outlets is rife with gross—and even cruel—distortions."

The FOX-Limbaugh-Drudge set is trying to cast Obama as a character as bad as George Bush... a murderer... but they have no actual bodies to dig up, like the million or so that Bush killed, so they have to invent some instead. Some of them crave the comparison so strongly, because they know, deep down, that Bush's political supporters are certainly complicit in his most diabolical mortal sins, his war crimes.

To mischaracterize Obama is to mischaracterize those of us who support him, and that's what they really want. They want us to lower our moral estimation of ourselves, so that we have no higher standards to use in our judgment of them. None of this is conscious. Their sense of guilt has made lunatics of them.

Would you Rapture-ready birth certificate conspiracy nuts please Rapture already, and leave the rest of us the hell alone, so we can get on with building a civil, livable society once you're gone?

Read more from AARP.

Obama's Doctor Down on Down Under?

2009-07-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be weirdly ironic if Republican's adopted single-payer just to thwart Obama? This backbiting interview with an Obama ally reminds me about how much stranger than fiction things can get in real life.

Strangerthat fiction: Obana's doc delivers teh poor diagnosis.

(HuffPo)

"I look at his program and I can't see how it's going to work," Scheiner told the Huffington Post.

"He has no cost control. There would be no effective cost control in his program. The CBO said it's going be incredibly expensive... and the thing that I really am worried about is, if it is the failure that I think it would be, then health reform will be set back a long, long time."

— Dr. David Scheiner, Obama's doctor

Read More.

The current House amalgamation: an effort to give everyone the essence of what they want... the pseudo-single-payer insurance policy and a universal-ish public option, competing in a preexisting condition-blind exchange with private insurance products, ALL for a trillion dollars over a decade... $100 billion a year... about the cost of a year in Iraq... It would seem not to be the end of the debate, even if it's signed as legislation.

There's a fear among everyone that one of these options is going to prevail, and maybe not theirs.

Europe's various single-payer and public healthcare systems were devised in the wake of world war wreckage we haven't seen here. It was a shock-doctrine application of emergency aide at a time when people didn't have the luxury to argue ideological preferences that are more psychologically affordable now and before the war.

Indeed, it might be argued that this is what the war was all about in the first place, competing strains of various forms of social and capital interests emerging from that horrible bombardment as a mixed social-capital economy.

"Even Mrs. Thatcher said, 'The Nation health Service is safe in our hands'. It's as non-contoversial as votes for women."

Europe fought and paid a heavy price to find the happy medium they seem to ejoy more than we enjoy being ourselves, and Canada benefited from the Queens apron strings, while Australia appears to have adopted, in 1984, something more similar to the collection of options we debate today.

The robust public option working alongside national and private payer insurance in a well-regulated market. Australia, which ranks seventh in life expectancy, even ahead of Canada, France, and Sweden, may be the over-looked comparison in most debates. Who would argue that they've become a trembling teacup brimming full with pampered effete milquetoast elites?

Obama's doctor is a single-payer purist, but there are examples of a successful hybrid approach that would neither befriend nor be-foe a particular option, exclusively, and why should we?

Read More.

Kristol: US Government Provides Best Healthcare

2009-07-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

Contrary to Republican rhetoric that the US government can't do anything right and therefore should NOT be let anywhere near healthcare, Bill Kristol steps into a mess of his own making by saying the healthcare we afford to military personnel is top notch... but so-called ordinary American's simply don't deserve as good.

Meanwhile, Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) dogs Rahm Emanuel and his conservative Blue Dog recruits. She says that her conservative and centrist fellow House members say they're holding out for a lower price-tag on healthcare, while they argue for higher reimbursement to doctors in their rural districts.

Waters rising in the House

(HuffPo)

"The chickens have come home to roost," declared the California Democrat.

"On the one hand, they don't want to spend money but, on the other hand, they want to spend money when they think it benefits them or their districts."

— Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles)

"Don't forget," she said, "He recruited most of them, when he was over in the Congress in the leadership. Rahm Emanuel recruited more conservative members, and based on some of the information I'm getting, they told them that they could."

Read More.

'Tis true...

2009-07-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

It struck me as poetic, too... but I realize too late, Palin's snarky, FOX-populist berate... in place of honest debate... that her jive didn't jibe with reality, because it's cold Yukon poetry, with white-rap asymmetry that only makes perfect sense when we say good-bye, when I listen with a smile.

Meanwhile... Jon Stewart... as usual... just doesn't get it, interpreting her more literally, instead of liberally... in which sense, she makes absolutely no sense.

And Huffington relays what "Charles Krauthammer said Monday on Fox News that her complaints have a 'whining quality'. Fred Barnes of the 'Weekly Standard' agreed:"

Whining and lionizing: a FOX Noose haiku

(HuffPo)

"There is a way to deal with the press. Look at the way Ronald Reagan did. He didn't attack the press. He teased them. He made fun of them. He jokes about them, embarrassed them. It was great. People loved it and it didn't have that edge, that whiny edge that you always want to avoid"

— Fred Barnes on FOX Noose

But FOX Noose largely lionized Sarah, calling her one of the greats... recasting each of her griping mistakes, now, as strategic tactics, comparing her siren to Richard Nixon in '62... hinting...

diabolically...

...no matter what we do... that Bill Kristol's media-elite creation, one we pretend is an authentically coarse grass-root manifestation... will be queen of the world some day.

Read More.

The Big Guy's Low Benchmark for Healthcare Reform

2009-07-27T14:55:00.000-07:00

Benchmark of sanity

(Trenholm)

"The House bill should include the four key elements that have already emerged from House committees:

(1) a public plan option,

(2) a mandate on all but the smallest employers to provide their employees with health insurance or else pay a tax or fee (so-called 'pay or play'),

(3) a requirement that every individual and family buy health insurance, coupled with subsidies for families up to 300 or 400 times the poverty level;

(4) a small surtax on the top 1 percent of earners or families to help pay for this subsidy."

— Robert Reich

Read More.

Reich should have included the matter of making pre-existing conditions moot, but he rounds all the rest up nicely in one paragraph.

When we speak disparagingly of all of this in the near future, let's remember the July benchmark that people in office and the likes of Reich set as the point of no return. There IS an element within the political apparatus of the elected Democratic Party that wants robust public healthcare and universal coverage subsided by the rich, the top 1%, for individuals making up to $41,600 a year (400% of the national poverty line).

That's where our cannibalistic recriminations must feast if Democrats are unable to pass it.

That's the mainstream Democratic benchmark for argument, debate, discussion and wishful thinking, while the so-called centrist wish-list is comprised of little more than a mandate that we all purchase private insurance... for responsibility sake... maybe-maybe not in exchange for insurance corporations turning a blind eye to pre-existing conditions... while they sit back to enjoy their handy work.

"In other words, next fall we might get something called 'universal health insurance' that still leaves millions of Americans uninsured and doesn't substantially slow the meteoric rise of healthcare costs. That would be a tragedy."

The frustration in all of this is that a single-payer system is misunderstood by most of those who argue against it, believing the concept itself to be some specifically defined and monolithic thing and mistaking it for the public-run health care of Canada and the UK, while misunderstanding the success and popularity of those public-run institutions too.

At this point, we can fairly call the proposal on the table in the House Obama and Pelosi's hybrid of a robust public-run healthcare option for those who don't buy into a parallel gateway to subsidized coverage concomitant with federal employee healthcare plans.

To leftists, progressives, and liberals arguing over the public option vs. single-payer, this love-child between the two camps will seem like a luxury, just a year or two from now... even to the flimsy-minded centrists who respond nervously to simplistic fear-mongering about how much the current, cruel system of corporate healthcare rationing means to being a true American.

"Finally, you, dear reader, must contact your senators and representatives and explain why you want genuine reform -- incorporating the four elements listed above. Mobilize and energize others to do the same, especially residents of Blue Dog states, including Montana, where Senate Finance Chief Max Baucus resides."

We hear from the swing-states: "Our 'con' column is a lot more than the 'pro,'" the aide to Sen. Mark Warner, (D-Va.) said. "There have been hundreds of people who are against the plan or any specific part of it compared to dozens for it. And that was only in the last week."

And THAT, my friends, is why healthcare reform will amount to little more than a mandate for purchasing private insurance.

If you live in one of these so-called centrist states or districts, if you care about healthcare reform, whether a public option or single-payer, if you haven't called your senators and representative, you're losing the battle for us.

What can you do if you don't live in a swing state? Again, if you know someone in Oregon, Connecticut, Maine, Louisiana, or Nebraska, now would be a good time to ask them to call or write one of these eight so-called centrists holding up the healthcare reform bill in the Senate.

Baucus of Montana
http://baucus.senate.gov/contact/offices.cfm

Conrad of North Dakota
http://conrad.senate.gov/contact/

Wyden of Oregon
http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/

Lieberman of Connecticut
http://lieberman.senate.gov/contact/

Snowe of Maine
http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorSnowe.Phone

http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorSnowe.Email

Collins of Maine
http://collins.senate.gov/public/continue.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorCollins.Phone

http://collins.senate.gov/public/continue.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorCollins.Email

Landrieu of Louisiana
http://landrieu.senate.gov/services/offices.cfm

Nelson of Nebraska
http://bennelson.senate.gov/email-issues.cfm

Read More.

Another Texas Mom Kills Her Kid for the Lord!

2009-07-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

The devil made me buy this dress!

(HuffPo)

"DALLAS — Police said they found a 3 1/2-week-old infant stabbed and decapitated in a Texas home on Sunday and his mother screaming that she killed her son after the devil told her to do it.

"Investigators took a sword, a machete and a kitchen knife from the home."

— Regina L. Burns, AP

Read More.

Nah, don't worry. LOTS of religious Texas ladies get away with whacking their babies for Jesus!

In Texas: Andrea Yates drowned all of her children for the Lord: Found not guilty.

In Texas: Deanna LaJune Laney stoned her sons to death for Jesus: Found not guilty.

In Texas: Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her kids before the evils spirits got them first: Acquitted.

In Texas: Dena Schlosser offered her daughter to the Lord: Found not guilty by reason of insanity.

And now, in Texas: Otty Sanchez stabbed and decapitated her 3 and a half week-old son after the devil told her to do it.

"She mentioned that someone or something told her to do it, she was hearing voices. So that leads us to believe that she was experiencing some type of mental crisis," Rios said. "The baby had obviously been decapitated."

McCourt said she told investigators that the devil told her to kill her son."

There's clearly a cultural pattern developing in that state, one no one really wants to discuss, out of fear of offending religious and regional sensitivities.

Court is just a formality.

It's practically a rite of passage for religious Texas mommies to prove their faith and whack a baby for Jesus.

She'll get away with it, and I propose the statistic that there's more parents that almost kill their kids than there are those who do it. Abraham was the first post-partum depression case, hearing the righteous voice of the Lawd tellin' him to knife Isaac... until Gawd called him off.

My theory is that the near-sacrifice of Isaac, bound on the mountain-top in Moriah, is a parable for more worldly parenting. It accepts that the harried parent might reflexively think he has a legitimate reason to kill his kid, but the noble thing is to hear any whisper of second-guessing... of Jehovah... in your ear... at the last second... and spare the mischievous monster, damaging him no further than making it clear you could do it if you had to. Genesis 22 may be the first case study in harmer reduction.

Read More.

Obama "Unfocused"

2009-07-26T12:09:00.000-07:00

When race relations are easier to talk about than healthcare reform, we have a really big problem.

Change... the subject?

(HuffPo)

"When you get Stephanopoulos, Huffington, Will, Brazil, and Krugman to agree on the high-holy conservative talkRadio trope that Obama, of all people, was unfocused, something went seriously wrong."

— RaptureAlready!

See more.

Anyone who saw the first 3/4 of Wednesdays infamous healthcare press conference would have come away informed, but if you stayed to the end, you would have forgotten all of that.

To paraphrase Jon Stewart: 50 minutes of healthcare policy... 30 seconds of racial controversy... I wonder what the media will lead with tomorrow?

It may be that healthcare reform was never really possible in the first place, and if it fails this time, Gates-gate will be the historical moment we will point to and blame, saying that it happened then and there, where healthcare reform went off the rails. That the Senate announced the following day that Obama's legislative deadline is dead says a lot about how blurry his point got that night.

Here's what we SHOULD be talking about.

It's not that Obama didn't make a great case Wednesday night, but he should have known the press would ditch healthcare's imperative in favor of a racist scandal.

More cynical voices say that's a perfectly obvious outcome, that it's hard to ignore their notion that Obama may have intended it. They have a point.

Watch This Week with George.

Lou Dobbs: From Curmudgeon to Nut

2009-07-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

Hot off being selected America's Most Trusted Newscaster, Jon Stewart gives Lou Dobbs hell for backing up those trigger-happy birth certificate conspiracy nuts.

Jon Stewart creams Dobbs

(HuffPo)

"Do you even WATCH CNN?

"It's your own BEEPING Network! And that was Kitty Pilgrim filling in for YOU on YOUR show!

"She debunked that theory, filling in for YOU, on YOUR show Lou!"

— Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Read More.

Just three days after his own CNN show debunked the cranky conservative conpiracy theory, Dobbs then said of such foolishness, "There's a lot of questions remaining, and seemingly the questions won't go away, because they haven't been dealt with."

A day earlier, MSNBC's Chris Matthews took on California Congressman John Campbell, a sponsore of the "Birther bill" which would require "future presidential candidates" (one in particular running in 2012) to provide a copy of their original birth certificate.

Matthews accuses Campbell of subtly "appeasing the wacko wing of his party" when the congressman appends "as far as I know" after Matthews presses him to admit that Obama's an American citizen.

CNN competes with FOX Noose to scrape the bottom of the barrel, because both stand ABSOLUTELY no chance of catching up with network TV news.

FOX clocks in, at their best, during the run up to THEIR Iraq war, at 3.9 million viewers a DAY. CNN barely break half a million adult viewers.

Meanwhile...

NBC Brian Williams: 9.6 million PER EPISODE
ABC Charles Gibson: 8.9 per episode
CBS Katie Couric: 7.8 million per episode

While rejecting CNN's craven struggle to live up to Roger Ailes journalistic standards, can we PLEASE stop accepting FOX lying about how popular they are?

Any of the national network TV anchors are more than twice as popular, even Katie. Combined, that's a LOT of people who don't choose FOX Noose.

Twenty-six million compared to 3.4 million? Most people are not FOX zombies.

Add CNN and MSNBC. It's 30 million non-FOX viewers, almost ten times as many.

Enough rightwing mythologies... hubris... and arrogance... misplaced anger... Dobbs spewing lies about Obama, like someone's rejected stalker.

"Limp-minded Lilly-livered Lefties"

Can you IMAGINE Brian, Charlie, Katie, Brokaw, Stephanopoulos, Schieffer, Koppel, Jennings, Russert, Cronkite, Brinkley... any of them acting the way Dobbs does.

They would NEVER even be in this position, and if they found themselves there, like Dan Rather, they'd have the decency to resign.

Read More.

GOP Kicked 5 Million Off Insurance Since Sept.

2009-07-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

The GOP delays reform in hope of killing it.

(HuffPo)

"The demographic that stands to gain the most from an increase in insurance coverage happens to represent the fastest-expanding voting bloc.

"More than 41 percent of Hispanic Americans are uninsured, Gallup reports, which is by far the largest segment of the U.S. population. The next highest groups are those who make less than $36,000 a year (28.6 percent uninsured) and those aged 18 to 29 (27.6 percent)."

— Sam Stein (Huffington Post)

Read More.

The Republicans have one plan, to end employer-sponsored healthcare and leave everyone out on the open market, victim to the whims of a capricious industry that makes money by denying treatment to those who need it.

"It is hard not to see the benefits for the political party that steps up to help resolve the health care problems of millions of Hispanic and young Americans. Just as, conversely, it is conceivable that the party that is blamed for obstructing comprehensive reform could suffer serious consequences at the polls."

Republicans are concerned about the cost of healthcare to business, not the cost of healthcare. They want to do nothing to bring down the price, only to shift any responsibility for the provision of healthcare coverage away from employers.

But the GOP's own internal polling finds Americans want a public plan an trust the Democrats over republicans to reform healthcare.

"According to the OMI survey, Republicans are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to the health care debate. For starters, 48 percent of the public said they trusted Democrats to 'fix the health care problem in America.' Only 29 percent said the same for Republicans. Meanwhile, 58 percent of respondents said that they favored 'creating a government run health insurance agency that will compete with private insurance companies,' while only 35 percent were opposed."

The GOP suddenly supports taxation of healthcare benefits, arguably the only reform they've offered, because it will encourage businesses to drop healthcare benefits altogether.

Read More.

Fake Gun-Nuts Collude on Senate Gun Vote

2009-07-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

Chuck Schumer and the Democrats orchestrate a careful charade of pro-gun votes, defeating the NRA while allowing vulnerable senators to vote Yes, but their Ayes really mean No.

Mayors v. Thune: Mayors defeat the NRA.

(HuffPo)

"As the vote neared an end, the door swung open and in bounded Pryor. 'Mr. President! Mr. President!' he shouted, getting the attention of the desk.

"Comfortable that Byrd wouldn't be making the trip, and with Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) voting no, Pryor switched his vote to a yes and the amendment failed by two, 58-39. Pryor (D-Arkansas) could now say at home that he stuck with the National Rifle Association."

— Ryan Grim (Huffington Post)

Read More.

It took me a long time to figure out that I'm not against guns as much as I'm against the people who really, really like them. These trigger-happy birth certificate conspiracy nuts running the GOP through the NRA are dangerously crazy.

As it is for certain church-sponsored marriage licenses, Senator Thune's NRA-sponsored ammendment would force states to respect the gun laws of other states when out-of-state pistol-packin' visitors come a-calling.

"Toward the end of the tally, Colorado Democrats Michael Bennet and Mark Udall walked in together and headed straight for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the third ranking Democrat in the Senate. Schumer gave Bennet a signal. Bennet looked back at Udall, who nodded."

In Thune's ideal world, a state that forbids felons from owning guns would have to allow some felon from a felon-with-a-gun state to carry his weapon.

A state that does NOT allow guns in school, church, or a bar would HAVE to allow the felon to cary his gun in their schools, churches, and bars... care of the NRA.

"With the dual green light, Bennet, a native of gun-hostile Washington, D.C., cast a yea vote for a radical weakening of gun laws. Udall followed him with another yes. The pair, secure that their yes votes wouldn't be enough to see the measure pass, walked together back up the aisle and sat side by side to take in the rest of the affair.

The occasional need for the people to rise up against their government is the reason the founding fathers left guns in the people's hands. The nostalgic paeans and political pabulum about the proud tradition of hunting... something fewer than 8% of Americans engage in any more... is nothing but rhetoric not even mentioned in the Constitution.

After eight years of Cheney and more to come from Lynn...

...you don't really want the government to be the only armed presence in America.

"In Wisconsin, Democrat Russ Feingold voted with the NRA while fellow Dem Herb Kohl knocked it down."

Russ Feingold, the real MOST liberal leftist in the senate, pretending to be a gun nut for the NRA crazies?

Now THAT's how crazy it gets.

Read More.

Sen Max Baucus takes $3M from Healthcare Lobby

2009-07-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

Baucus Maxxes out

WaPo

"To avoid any appearance of favoritism, his aides say, Baucus quietly began refusing contributions from health-care political action committees after June 1. But the policy does not apply to lobbyists or corporate executives, who continued to make donations, disclosure records show."

— Dan Eggen Washington Post

The history book on the shelf...

2009-07-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

...Is always repeating itself.

Tom DeLay redeux?

(HuffPo)

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo.

It will break him."

— Jim DeMint

Peter's Letter to Congress

2009-07-18T01:12:00.000-07:00

Quite.

(HuffPo)

"Legislation is already pending in the Senate to reduce the control individual lawmakers and Congress as a whole have over setting the rates doctors and other providers are paid under Medicare.

"In his letter, Orszag forwarded an alternative proposal that he said would accomplish the same goal.

— David Espo (AP)

Read more about the administration's healthcare push.

As it is, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recommends how much Medicare pays doctors and other providers. Congress isn't obliged to follow them or even vote on the recommednation when it sets annual rates.

Orszag recommended that lawmakers vote on the 10-member board recommendations, and he proposes that the recommendations take effect unless rejected by the House and Senate.

I know it's totally post-PC to remark on Orszag's Semetic good looks, but has anyhbody called gaydar on this guy yet?

Obama's weekend healthcare address:

"In a statement released after Obama spoke, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said lawmakers 'now stand on the doorstep' of enacting legislation."

Meanwhile, six centrist senators hope to slam the door in the face of healthcare reform. This is one of those moments when you can do something, even if our your own peculiar senators aren't involved.

"I can almost guarantee you this thing won't pass before August, and if we can hold it back until we go home for a month's break in August... Senators and Congressmen will come back in September afraid to vote against the American people," South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint predicted.

"If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," he said.

If you know someone in Oregon, Connecticut, Maine, Louisiana, or Nebraska, now would be a good time to see if they're willing to call or write one of these six senators trying to hold up the healthcare reform bill in the Senate.
Request this dirty half-dozen act in good faith.

Have your friends contact:

Wyden of Oregon
href="http://wyden.senate.gov/contact

Lieberman of Connecticut
http://lieberman.senate.gov/contact

Snowe of Maine
http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorSnowe.Phone

http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorSnowe.Email

Collins of Maine
http://collins.senate.gov/public/continue.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorCollins.Phone

http://collins.senate.gov/public/continue.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorCollins.Email

Landrieu of Louisiana
http://landrieu.senate.gov/services/offices.cfm

Nelson of Nebraska
http://billnelson.senate.gov/contact/legislation.cfm

If you believe the arch of history places us directly in the path of prophecy, that the Rapture is eminent, and the Tribulation is teetering over us... why abandon us to 7 years of hell without healthcare... just moments before you go?

"Acts 4:31-37: When they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

They spoke the word of God with boldness. The multitude was of one heart and one soul: neither said any of them that the things which he possessed were his own, but they had all things common.

Neither was there anyone among them that lacked, for many who possessed land or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according to his need.

We have few secular apostles to speak with any authority for the interests of the damned. Virtually ALL of our elected officials are defenders of faith in this completely meddlesome God of ours, and we have to negotiate for ourselves, our agnostic needs, and we ask you to leave us with a healthcare system in better shape than the way you found it.

Ezekiel : "Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?"

God asks you to leave it better than the way you found it.

Read more about the Dirty half-Dozen.

Texas Evangelist Marries 8 Year Old Girl

2009-07-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

Eight is enough?

(SFGate)

"A woman who said evangelist Tony Alamo "married" her at age 8 is telling federal jurors that he sexually assaulted her repeatedly until she escaped his compound in late 2006.

"Alamo took explicit photographs of her that year with an instant camera and, on looking at them, called her a sexually demeaning name. She said she didn't understand the term but that Alamo told her it was a good thing."

— Jon Gambrell, AP

Read More.

It's becoming too costly for Protestant churches to buy insurance for sexual abuse.

"Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant."

From Penn State professor Philip Jenkins book, Pedophiles and Priests:

Between 0.2 and 1.7% of priests are pedophiles, while the figure among Protestant clergy ranges between 2.0 and 3.0%.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests reports that the 2nd largest US church, the Southern Baptist Convention, is heavily involved in cover-up and reassignment of preachers.

"Though Baptist church scholars report sex abuse as prevalent among Protestants as among Catholics, Southern Baptists have no national policies, and abuse is routinely covered up."

"Successfully," I'd say.

Read More at SFGate.

Starve a Baby for God

2009-07-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

With the backdrop of a neighborhood in a religious rampage over policy initiated under Jerusalem's new secular mayor, a very religious lady is arrested for starving her baby.

Holy Moley! Über-orthodox Jews invade secular 'hood.

(HuffPo)

"They've dismantled traffic lights, and without traffic lights deadly accidents could take place. They've disconnected systems in electricity poles and people could be electrocuted.

"I have not found a single place in the Bible where it is written that these actions are permissible."

— Jerusalem Police Chief Aharon Franco

Read about more mayhem @ The Jerusalem Post.

The Judeo-Christian-Muslim religion justifies Abraham trying to stab his own child as a sacrifice to Jehovah. The religion raises its own children to believe the willingness to do so is an admirable sign of faith in God, who supposedly approves, so I think they can get by the horror of trying to starve a child too. Judging from the riots, they obviously do.

"Rioting over the woman's arrest showed no sign of abating on Thursday afternoon, with police being forced to evacuate welfare workers from their office in the Geula neighborhood as haredim pelted the building with stones. No one was wounded in the latest incidents.

"Meanwhile, haredi protesters burned tires and hurled stones at passing vehicles... In addition, 15 other demonstrators protested outside Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, where the boy is currently hospitalized."

Religion, like a gun, is a killer in the hands of the beholder, but I can't think of the last time I saw rampaging atheists and agnostics in the street.

Read about more mayhem @ The Jerusalem Post.

Ralf Reed Returns from the Dark Side

2009-07-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

Reed My Lips no new axes.

(ajc)

"I do guerrilla warfare," Reed once boasted to a reporter, describing how he ambushed his enemies as a political operative. "I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag"

— Ralph Reed

Read more about Reed's diabolical come-back.

Google: Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff, Sun Myung Moon, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, and see how much company they keep.

Today, much of the Republican Party is made up of southern segregation Democrats and their offspring, those who were disgusted by northern Democrats who signed onto the 1964 Civil Right Act. They and their children, and their children's children, have never gotten over it.

Neoconservatives, represented today by Kristol, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Pearl soon followed, because of their disgust for fellow Democrats involved with the anti-Vietnam War peace movement.

But the GOP sealed its fate, the one it's living today, when Ronald Reagan kissed the opulent ring of that corpulent gay-basher, Jerry Falwell, who ostensibly ran the Moral Majority on behalf of Ralph Reed, who's been laundering church tithing for decades via illegal operations with his College Republican cronies, Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist.

Rove sopped up the dregs of these religiBigot war-mongers from the Democratic Party in 2004, but they were nothing new to the GOP by then, just the ones who needed that kick in the pants from 9/11 scareMongering...

...and the wedgie he gave them over same-sex marriage. More war... More religion. Warligion is their brand, so the DNC was essentially drained of these characters by then.

What we see now is the mass-migration of those three waves of jihadi-bigots from Bush to Palin, in whom they've suddenly found his intellectual relative browsing the city library stacks for books to burn.

That movement and the moderates now being purged from the RNC is the primary political dynamic of our day. The Democrats have only had to sit quietly, eerily polite for the last four years, while 8 years of self-serving policy disasters destroy the RNC.

Ralph Reed, if he had it to do all over again, would do it all over again.

Read more about Reed's return from the Dark Side.

You May NOT Kiss the Bride?

2009-07-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Who would Jesus arrest for a kiss?

(Huffpo)

"Aune, 28, said he gave Jones, 25, a hug and kiss and that the two were then approached by a security guard, who asked them to leave, telling them they were being inappropriate and that public displays of affection aren't allowed on the property. He said other guards arrived and the men were handcuffed."

— Matt Aune, to the AP

Read More.

Mind you, Utah allows guns in church, in a state where the Mormon church signs off on law.

It's one thing to be within your rights and another thing to be right.

The Mormon Church, arguably, could be within its right to ban hugs and kisses, but it's wrong to ban hugs and kisses, especially in church, where they couldn't be more appropriate and should be more prevalent.

If there really is no kissing or hugging allowed in and around the Mormon churches and temples... that's one sad situation.

It just says something about a church that would outlaw displays of affection.

But... but...

"their strategy is shock tactics for Grandma, which does NOTHING but reverse supporters, alienate those who WANT to support them, alienate the majority of gay people who do not think public displays of sexuality are appropriate ways of garnering support for important issues, and continue to block the closet door for those of us who do not agree with their minority theatrics."

Public displays of sexuality? A hug and kiss?

Really?

No kiss at the alter for you then.

Support for gay rights and same-sex marriage is ever-increasing, not diminishing.

What pessimistic world do you live on? The younger generation is coming to sweep this old way of thinking away.

This is NOT and issue for most people 29 and below.

Read More.

David Brooks: an Inner Sanctum of RNC Politics

2009-07-10T18:18:00.000-07:00

Inside David Brook's Politcs!

(Politico)

"You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you.

I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here."

— David Brooks, NYTimes Political columnist

Read in on Politico

My niece sees Shields & Brooks on PBS and thinks they look like a pair of movie reviewers, and she's not that far off.

What drama, but in his younger days the idea of patting David on the inner thigh doesn't sound as bad, and it could easily have been Mark Foley mistaking Brooks for just another chicken dinner.

We need more context and timeframe tp properly seat this story:

BROOKS: "You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here."

HARWOOD: "What?"

BROOKS: "I can only imagine what happens to you guys."

O’DONNELL: "Sorry, who was that?"

BROOKS: "I’m not telling you, I’m not telling you."

See it on YouTube

Peggy Pegs Palin

2009-07-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

Conservative columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan pens the epilogue on the rise and fall of Sarah Palin, but I don't think Palin's done with us yet. Still, it's scathing stuff:

Noonan's non-no on Palin's no-go.

(HuffPo)

"She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence.

"In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying."

— Peggy Noonan

Read more, if you dare

I don't think anybody has put it any better, except when Noonan put it even more succinctly, very early on, when she was caught on a live mike last year calling "political bullshit" on the Palin pick for VP.

Chuck Todd: "Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?"

Peggy Noonan: "The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives."

Chuck Todd: "Yeah they went to a narrative."

Mike Murphy: "I totally agree."

Noonan also reads the beads of people who make excuses for the rise and fall of Sarah Palin, "some of whom have taken to telling themselves Palin myths. To wit..."

"I love her because she's so working-class." She is not working class, never was. Her father was a teacher and school track coach, her mother the school secretary. They were middle-class figures of respect, stability and local status. I think intellectuals call her working-class because they see the makeup, the hair, the heels and the sleds and think they're working class 'tropes.' Because, you know, that's what they teach in 'Ways of the Working Class' at Yale and Dartmouth.

I'm reminded of my sister's harangue. She's in education and says "kids today" are taught that everybody's a little prince or princess, everyone's a winner, except Noonan aims directly at OUR generation:

"The media did her in." Her lack of any appropriate modesty did her in. Actually, it's arguable that membership in the self-esteem generation harmed her. For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they're perfect in every way. It's yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.

And here's an instance of power speaking truth to power.

"The elites hate her." The elites made her. It was the elites of the party, the McCain campaign and the conservative media that picked her and pushed her. The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon.

Are you listening Bill Kristol? Do your party a favor. Stop dumbing down to them. Enough of these Dan Quayle-esque dumbasses you keep digging up!

Read of Noonan's scathing eulogy at the WSJ.

Burris: The Sarah Palin of DNC Politics

2009-07-09T17:02:00.000-07:00

Two peas, two pods

(HuffPo)

"Burris was appointed by disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama. His appointment was criticized from the moment it was announced and prompted calls for Burris to resign...

— Henry C Jackson (AP)

Read More.

Alan just said that I nailed it:

Burris is the Sarah Palin of the Democratic Party, defiant until the... until the... premature end.

His effective resignation just seals the impression of a loud mouth out of his league.

Really, the guy has the gall-filled balls of that woman, shrugging off his own parade of ethical violation... the violations of Blagojevich... as if it's just something someone made up just to get under his skin.

"Burris also faced structural barriers, including anemic fundraising. Recent polls have shown most Illinois voters do not support him, and he has repeatedly changed his story about his dealings with Blagojevich"

We're all special and have peculiar and wonderful talents, but where do some people get this sense of entitlement, the feeling that God intends SUCH great things for them... to the extent that their lies and deceit, even treachery seems to them like the will of God too?

Read More.

The Obama bank bailout that didn't

2009-07-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

Today, we're looking at the Obama bank bailout that didn't happen under an administration routinely noted to have simply followed its predessessors's lead.

A Tale of two Bailouts?

Marin Independent Journal

"According to GAO, the government has disbursed approximately $339 billion and promised $102 billion more. That leaves some $259 in the fund plus the $70 billion banks have repaid."

— Guvmnt Accounting Office

More: Bailing on the bailout

Of the $700 billion bank bailout passed in a panic last October, then-treasury secretary Hank Paul gave $350 billion to the banks, with the rest pending the new administration's request and approval by Congress.

There's $328 billion unspent or uncommitted left in the fund.

Mind you, the amount spent includes cash allocated to each of the following programs, collectively known as a bank bailout, but little understood in its parts:

Capital Purchase (100s of banks, big & small): $133.068 Bln

Automotive Industry (GM & Chrysler): $79.966 billion

Automotive Supplier Support: $5 billion

Targeted Investment (Citibank & BofA): $40 billion

Asset Guarantee (Citibank) $5 billion

Systematically Significant
Failing Institutions (AIG): $69.835 billion

Consumer and Business Lending: $20 billion

The Home Affordability Modification plan: $18,669 billion

See the TARP Transaction Report @ FinancialStability.gov

Since Obama took office, , only five no-name banks have taken more than $100 million in bailout funds in exchange for company shares.

Starting on page 4 of the July TARP Transaction Report, only two no-name banks have sold $200 million in shares to the Treasury. Only Discover, at $1.2 billion, and Hartford, at 3.4 billion, have broken $1 billion.

Gone are the money-salads served to BofA, Citibank, Goldman, JPMorgan-Chase, Morgan Stanly, and Wells Fargo... $10-25 billion per plate... between October and January.

They don't say so here, but it seem that the semblance of conditions the Obama administration put on bailed-out banks, weak though that criteria seems, compared to what you'd think is needed, have been onerous enough to keep the banks from being particularly interested in taking the rest of the money.

The Marryin' kind?

2009-07-08T19:09:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom doesn't let getting jilted by 53% of Californians get him down. Left at the altar by Prop 8, he's raising the dowry for a run for governor, with no concerted competition for the state's hand yet apparent.

Gavin Newsom raking in cash

(SFGate)

"Should have asked some SF residents what he's really like. Judging from the commenters on SFGate Gavin is not the most popular guy in town."

— WillfromSF

Read More of Joe Garofoli's take

That has always been an odd feature, that the preponderance of SFGate commenter-hate never seems to manifest electorally, increasing Newsom's win from 53% in his first mayoral election to 72% in his reelection.

Who was not surprised how competition ran, hiding, even after various peccadilloes could have made Newsom vulnerable? It's as if he becomes more popular as his antagonists become more mouthy, but it's probably the other way around.

Is he governor material?

Has CaLEEFORNia had a governor who was... lately?

If only 28% of SFer's hate Newsom, we can assume some of them are angry Green Party hippies, still pulling for 2003 mayoral runner-up Matt Gonzalez, or the Rapture-ready zealots upset about same-sex marriage.

That leaves maybe 10% who dislike the man personally, and they're just never been enough to swing the race.

Read More of Joe Garofoli's splashy politcal savvy @SFGate

It's Opposite Day in Play-school

2009-07-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

Sort of the Dennis Miller of unlikely conservatives

(breitbart)

"I'd been wondering why the liberals are so passionate about this Health Care thing. It couldn't be because they actually care about sick, poor people. If they did, they would visit hospitals, and give ten percent of their gross salaries to Compassion International and World Vision, like us stupid church go-ers do."

— Victoria Jackson?

Read on exhibit A.

Victoria Jackson's like this Palin-Coulter love-child... but without the love.

One day we're laughing at the antics of her baby-doll character on SNL, and then it's like the Zombie Jesus got her. These opposite-mongers twist very basic precepts of their religion into something cruel, unforgiving, and stingy.

"Socialized medicine makes people die. You stand in a long, long line with a breast lump, clogged artery, or sharp pencil stuck in your eye, and someone like the DMV person, who can’t speak English, has chewing gum, an attitiude, really long fake nails that curl up at the end, and is talking on a cell phone, enjoying their power trip moment, is finally face to face with you."

Au contraire, my Rapture-ready birth certificate conspiracy nut.

You can get caught up on so-called socialism, but some people call it Christian:

Act 4:31-37:

When they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. They spoke the word of God with boldness.

The multitude was of one heart and one soul: neither said any of them that the things which he possessed were his own, but they had all things common.

Neither was there anyone among them that lacked, for many who possessed land or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according to his need.

Read more about exhibit A.

Nixon said the darnedest things...

2009-07-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

Ze Frank dices black and white

(TIME)

"There are times when abortion is necessary. I know that. ...when you have a black and a white. Or rape."

— Richard Nixon

More Ze being Frank.

...but Nixon said something that most religious conservatives don't cop to today, that their real concern about abortion is not for the life of an undifferentiated cluster of blastocyst cells, but for what they fear to be inconsequential promiscuity.

Rapture-voters could solve the problem of abortion by making it unnecessary, by pushing for family-friendly wages, proportional tax policy, and the right to a healthy life... not just life... but universal, affordable healthcare, the trop of Obama's philosophy, which hopes to make abortion unnecessary, not illegal.

They would stop ranting about abortion and do something to make life a viable option, an exciting choice, instead of impossible. They would literally argue to make raising babies affordable.

Back to promiscuity. That's an argument I heard a lot as a kid, clatter about the rampant promiscuity unleashed by the Supreme Court's ruling on Roe v Wade, but that inarguably nosy-sounding noise was soon supplanted by the pro-life stand, after the roving ban of sex police went out of fashion in America.

At the Atlantic Free Press, Jayne Stall points out that the same release of Nixon tapes frees a tidbit between Nixon and Republican Party National Committee chair, George H.W. Bush, discussing the merit of picking a beautiful woman to run for office.

Nixon says, "Understand, I don't do it because I'm for women, but I'm doing it because I think maybe a woman might win someplace where a man might not."

Charmed from the start.

Read More about Nixon's strange appeal to to women.

Palin's Indenpendence Party

2009-07-04T02:18:00.000-07:00

Palin concedes BEFORE the reelection campaign

(Huffpo)

"But you don't hear much of the good stuff in the press anymore, do you?

Some say things changed for me on August 29th last year - the day John McCain tapped me to be his running-mate - I say others changed."

— Sarah Palin

Read More.

Something uncomfortable about not having Dick Nixon to kick around anymore comes hauntingly to mind. You KNOW we haven't seen the last of the Palins yet.

Was talking to friends this week about the idea that Palin has transcended politics in the same way Paris Hilton somehow transcends celebrity, both of them becoming demigoddesses that no longer depend on auditioning for a role or campaigning for office.

Both have somehow wheedled their uniquely public persona into something beyond the roles they more ostensibly assume, living life as reality TV characters, albeit characters outside any particular reality TV program. They're multi-media reality stars, born for 24-hour cable, YouTube, txting, tweeting, and blogging.

Their whole lives have achieved a unique status, abiding like those who are famous just for being themselves... instead of any role they might play.

Michael Jackson had achieved it, but he didn't rest well knowing it. He seemed determined to bounce back as a pop star confined by production schedules... rather than inhabit the character of always-on notoriety he had become.

I think Palin recognized this, saw that the Alaska office was just dragging her down, when she could be out on the open road running the Sarah Palin Show... without a state ethics board in tow.

To what end... I don't know. She could just as easily become the political world's Kato Kaelin as she can be Paris Hilton, who has decided to sit back herself, now, to rewrite her place in the world, after notoriety was displaced by notorious.

"Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I've been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations - such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters' questions.

"Every one - all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We've won!"

After hearing her concession, Tom in the Richmond asks, "Did she just say that to hunker down and get the job done in the face of adversity is the quitters way out?"

"Really?"

In essence, she said it!

She's also saying it's okay to lie about "Every one - all 15 of the ethics complaints having been dismissed."

"Bitch was toll she abuse her power, and that her husban' abuse her power... when they went on the family feud after the brother in law... using, the full unfaith and power of the governor's office"

— Anonymous Source

Speaking of ethics, maybe something bigger's coming up, and the Palin's are hunkering down or distancing themselves, maybe as money to fight it dries up, but I have to say, I might be more nervous not knowing what she's up to without an ethics committee looking after her from now on.

Tom in the Richmond also wonders, "if she's counting on the fact that people will forget this by the time she's running for president, because all she's shown right now is that when the going gets tough, she runs away.

"I wonder if it has anything to do with other GOP governors getting caught doing super hypocritical things. Is she just trying to stay out of the crosshairs?"

Aye!

My suspicion is; she's realized that the never-ending henpecking of the press, on every stupid thing she's come up with, will not subside, and that it's no way to prepare for higher office, especially when she can reasonably expect to lose reelection for governor in Alaska.

I think she's been properly advised by FOX Noose's Greta Van Stusteren to transcend political office, to operate from her own platform, where she can't be held ethically accountable while she remakes herself for 2012.

Read More.

Caricature of Republican Party Backs Honduras Coup

2009-07-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

In the battle for preposterous GOP hypocrisy, Sen Jim DeMint (D-South Carolina) hopes to unseat his state's governor, Mark Sanford, in the "You've GOT to be Kidding" competition that's been destroying Republican Party over the last five years.

DeMint demurs to democracy in Central America

(HuffPo)

The president has "flouted the constitutional authority of the congress and Supreme Court, and claimed for himself extra-constitutional control of his nation’s military and political institutions...

The Supreme Court ruled that his actions were unjustified and illegal."

—Sen. DeMint (R-S.C.)

Read: DeMint makes no specific charge of wrong-doing.

With nary a hint of irony, the GOP senator chastised someone else's president, but never George Bush, who flouted separation of powers, claimed unconstitutional authority, and lost repeatedly in case after case before the Supreme Court in his bid to run the country like he owned it.

Citing, of all things, rule of law, DeMint backs a military coup unseating a democratically elected president for promoting a non-binding referendum on the question of calling a constitutional convention.

When all is said and done, we'll see that some weirdly powerful shadow operative, some dangerously Cheney-esque character, a young acolyte of John Poindexter or Oliver North organized the military coup on behalf of some Honduran coffee oligarchy, the local millionaires and billionaires who see democracy as their right to have populist union leaders strung-up and whacked like piñatas just for being mouthy, pushy, or, God forbid, empowered by fellow laborers who strike for family-friendly wages and benefits like a share of the profits and healthcare.

Remember, even when they're not in power, the GOP is fundraising to keep right-wing death-squads awash in weapons, blow, and 'tang, while they comb the mountains for union organizers to disappear, like some Rapture of the Dark Side.

"Romeo Vasquez, a general who led the military coup in Honduras against President Manuel Zelaya, received training at the US School of the Americas. The SOA has trained more than 60,000 soldiers, many of whom have returned home and committed human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial execution and massacres."

Interestingly enough, there is an upcoming bill, HR 2567 in Congress, the Latin America Military Training Review Act.

This bill will suspend all operations at the school, and there will be a full investigation about the school and its hundreds of graduates who have been involved in these atrocities and coups. Eleven dictators have gone through this school. Whenever there’s been a coup, like this one in Honduras, over the past decades, there has been a direct connection to this school.

To people like Dewitt, supporting democracy in Central America has never been much more than a GOP shadow government in support for the moneyed elite who own most of the produce-growing areas and mining land.

Meanwhile, "The Organisation of American States (OAS) had earlier given Honduras a 72-hour deadline to restore Zelaya to the presidency or face expulsion from the 35-nation body."

That regional condemnation of the coup came just after one passed by the UN General Assembly calling for "immediate and unconditional" return of Zelaya to the presidency.

Overthrowing an elected president, because he's promoting a non-binding referendum on the question of calling a constitutional convention, that's SO over the top that it smacks of the kind of secret, deadly operations the GOP has been gratuitously involved in, destabilizing the region for decades.

When it comes out, and everybody is scandalized, keep in mind that we already know Republicans specialize in destroying presidencies ALL the time.

Read more on the Huffington Post

Glenn Beck Hosts an Armageddon-monger

2009-07-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

An Invitation to Dr. Doom from Glenn Beck

(HuffPo)

"The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States...

...only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them."

—Michael Scheuer with Glenn Beck

Go crazy

This is Going to Hurt

2009-07-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

The Economist LOVES Obama's plan... as long as he doesn't implement it?

50 million bee stings will hurt a little

(The Economist)

"Another option, favoured by many Democrats and the president, is for the government to step in with a results-based plan of its own, to compete against the private industry.

"Mr Obama should use it as a threat, rather than implement it now. If the private sector does not meet certain cost-cutting targets in, say, five years, a public-sector plan should automatically kick in. Such a prospect would encourage hospitals and doctors to accept a painful but necessary reform now."

— The Economist

A dose of prescribed reading on reform at The Economist

Wrong.

That's a philosophical argument about pseudo-liberal market incentive that has nothing to do with what's happening on the ground.

HillaryCare served notice to the megalo-conglomerate corporate medical complex in 1993, and the industry has done nothing but make matters worse since then. We're NOT starting this argument over again from scratch, as if the industry has been caught off guard by the problem

The GOP and healthcare industry SAID they could do better but promptly wrought inarguable greed: 50 million are uninsured while countless numbers buy HIGH-premium, HIGH-deductible, LOW-service plans that reap billions in profit for an industry that is completely unmoved by the plight of the sick and dying: the distressed, lame, and injured who they drive from their membership roles as soon as corporate cost is incurred.

It's just cruel by now to give the industry five MORE dreadful years to come around to their senses and offer something kind, caring, and intentionally effective.

"The sticker-shock for an insurance mandate is really just a reflection of the second big problem: the overall cost structure of American health care. Indeed, one of the worst things about Mr Obama’s oddly hands-off approach to health reform is that he is concentrating on a symptom, not the underlying disease."

Au contraire, mon frère.

Obama speaks at leangth, saying, "The biggest thing we can do to hold down costs is to change the incentives of a health care system that automatically equates expensive care with better care," He said the formula system drives up costs "but doesn't make you better."

The $1.5 trillion estimate from the Congressional Budget Office is based on Senate proposals that do not include Obama's public plan or the projected cost reductions that such an extraordinary force of competion would bring to the market.

This newspaper is NOT clear about the problem at all:

With the threat of healthcare reform on the table, everyone's costs are already accelerating. A number of friends have gotten their notification of this increase in the mail, because the industry is gouging the population in anticipation of the regulation and competition with which you suggest the industry ought to be threatened.

THAT's how this industry responds to the threat of government competition, by getting ahead of the inevitability of it through price hikes.

Your fair-warning scenario has ALREADY played out, and it's time to fix healthcare for PEOPLE and patients, and forget about fixing it for a dysfunctional corporate oligarchy that has held the Pursuit of Life and miracle of healing in a greedy death-grip for so friggin' long.

"If it is as easy as you describe for the nasty, greedy healthcare industry, why don't you take some of your capital and risk it in the business? This question can go to anyone that thinks that this or any other corporate industry is nothing but greedy. In short get off your high horse and do something constructive, take a risk."
— Sackmaster's response on The Economist

Isn't that exactly what we're doing when we say we should all collectively invest in the best public health system possible?

We're capitalizing a public healthcare system and spreading the risk across a society that WILL benefit together by covering everyone.

That's everyone taking a risk, and there's no high horse in saying that the current system is leaving SO many people behind.

I would suspect the ironic argument against the public option comes from those who DON'T want to take the risk and invest in constructive competition to the current industry of balkanized consumers and colluding proprietors

Tell me I'm on my high horse, but DON'T tell me the insurance industry has ANY interest in fixing this problem. When a large number of modern industrialized countries do this better, at half the cost, it's obvious my high horse has a valid point to make.

To the insurance industry and its culture of life-defying greed, I say, "Neigh!"

Indeed, I agree and welcome your theory: we each should invest our capital gladly, those that have any, and risk it in the most constructive, competitive public healthcare sector ever.

We're on the same page after all, you see.

Read more responses to this story on The Economist

Kristol Dishes!

2009-07-01T01:42:00.000-07:00

The fight over the much-aledged mis-handling of Palin continues.

Post-partum Diva or the future of the GOP?

(Politico/AP/VanityFair)

"When Kristol questioned the likelihood of a male like Mark Wallace using such a gossipy term as diva, (to describe Palin) this source said, Scheunemann wrote back that Mark Wallace knows something about divas because he’s married to a diva."

— Jonathan Martin

Read more post-party gossip @ Politco

Good god, how ironic to read so far into such a sordid tale of sectarian gossip-mongering, and then to have a rumor mill like Bill Kristol cough up such a bizarre one.

What a bunch of divas they ALL are, and the preposterous macho posturing is just a laugh riot coming from one so prim, pursed and plainly effete at Ms. Kristol.

"Was Palin a fresh talent whose debut was mishandled by self-serving campaign insiders, or an eccentric diva who had no business on the national stage?"
— Jonathan Martin for Politico
Damn! If you have to ask...

But it gets even worse: Asked about these accusation, McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt struck back: "I'm sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign."

"After all, his management of Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away," Schmidt continued.

Putting his experience as a blogger to good use, Jonathan Martin is totally rolling with the snark.

Go read more of Martin's gossipy drool!

The facts are these: If George Bush could pull it off, barging his way into office by way of the kind of judicial activism he swore he abhorred, having done it with a brain no better than Sarah Palin's, the American people COULD be just as susceptible to her under the right circumstances.

"There is ultimately no way to read McCain’s selection of Palin as reflecting anything other than an appalling egotism, heedlessness, and lack of judgment in a man whose courage, tenacity, and character they have extravagantly admired.
— Todd Purdum, Vanity Fair

But I think we've changed and may be set for at least 80 years before the religious crazies will be again able to whip people up into a supersticious stupor over the NEXT Millennium, Rapture, Tribulation, and Armageddon.

We're a decade past that mythological due date, so the appeal of a Rapture-ready battle axe like Palin is limited to the 20% of people who need end-times Apocalypse-mongering to get them to the polls.

"What happened, was what the McCain campaign had not really taken the time to find out, that there was a whole sort of counter-story about her in Alaska that was a lot less rosy than the one they sold of a governor... so there were always a lot more problems with her than they knew."
She'll do great in places like Indiana, Texas, and Alabama, but she'll need to reinvent herself on a scale that George Bush was able to do for himself, if she's going to pull off an electoral heist as blatantly as he did in 2000.

Go read Purdum's gossipy brew at Vanity Fair!

Sanford Hoped to Reconcile Wife to Maria

2009-06-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

Try it; you might like it

(HP)

"In early 2009, after Jenny Sanford discovered the affair, the couple went into counseling. She has told The Associated Press that he asked her several times to visit the mistress... and she refused.

"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story," Sanford said. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day." Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate."

— Gov. Mark Sanford

More about Mark's other women

Abandoning the concept of a nuclear family altogether, Sanford explains why he shouldn't resign, saying he "finds interesting", the story of King David, the story of a man who had eight wives, not counting his numerous concubines.

Admitting this week that there were other dangerous liaisons with various women throughout his marriage and political career, Sanford finds biblical precedent for his family situation, pointing out that his life appears to track with that of Judaism's most admired mensch.

"About an hour after Jenny Sanford talked of her pain and feelings of betrayal, her husband brushed aside any suggestion he might immediately resign, citing the Bible and the story of King David.

"What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily — fell in very, very significant ways, but then picked up the pieces and built from there," Sanford told members of his cabinet.
Read more about Mark's identification with King David

Let's STOP mincing words.

The question isn't whether Mark Sanford values family, it's how many families he values.

This is just MORE hypocrisy from the Rapture-panic party arguing that same-sex marriage is dangerous because it could lead down the slippery slope to LEGAL polygamy.

This wistful Gentile mensch is essentially an emotional polygamist preaching nuclear family values to everyone else.

"It's as though we're looking at a completely different person, one we didn't know existed," Sen. Larry Martin (R-Pickens) said of Sanford.

Sanford and his family, his political associates, see this as some kind of heroic struggle instead of the hypocritical lifestyle of a man who simply wants it both ways... to play the part of a judgmental Christian conservative role model for moneyed religious interests... and also to live as a polygamist desert king in the Levant, duplicity his wife and political associates could live with until he was outted by the mistress's boyfriend and cornered at the airport by a reporter.

I'm pretty sure Jenny didn't like it, so she should have call him on his social conservative hypocrisy WHILE he was lining up with the likes of Palin, Bachmann, Ensign, and Vitter to declare themselves guardians of America's families and marriage.

Sanford resigned from his leadership position in the Governors Association, only after he was publically outted by others, not because his relationships with other women were known by his wife and political associates...supporters who still saw him as leadership material in spite of these transgressions against what he professed to be THE fundamental elements of both his life and the life of all of man-kind.

"I do think he can be an effective leader,” said his former chief of staff and friend for more than 30 years, Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort. "I don’t think he should resign."

Evoking the many wives and concubines of King David in order to heep his grip on leadership colors his expanding litany of pseudo-wives. This man feels entitled, philosophically allotted the women and power that he's gotten, and I'm really not all that inclined to argue that he might have a point if he wasn't such a hypocritical liar and judgmental jack ass about everybody else's particular and peculiar decisions about love, sex and family.

"We’ve heard from some people in recent days who separate the bedroom from the board room. I don’t," said Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson

Cold Comfort...

2009-06-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

...for a community that revels in visibility battles over prescriptive language, Obama's backroom maneuvers give LGBT groups nothing to fundraise about, no cause célèbre to swaddle in a gay flag and nurture as a victim of intolerance.

Not your daddy.

(HP)

"Obama added that he was working with the Pentagon, as well as Congress, to end 'Don't Ask Don't Tell.' He called this period a 'transition' toward that end but said it had to be done pragmatically, so the new policy works in the long-term."

— Obama, speaking to LGBT movement leaders

Read more

Too many LGBT people will be left feeling unsatisfied and clammy after repeal of DOMA and DADT... after passage of ENDA and the hate crimes bill gives them no more reason to feel good about themselves than they already have.

"We've been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration."
Since there is no elegant ratification of an amendment to the Constitution, one reemphasizing that "This Means Everybody!"... what other process is there but incremental passage of legislation?

What is there besides successive stages that will never really satisfy a community that clings to a pseudo-mythology regarding the glorious day daddy will say it's okay to be gay and everybody listens?

Unless the LGBT community learns to celebrate the occasional incremental success as raucously as it laments injustice and occasional setbacks, there will never be any feeling of accomplishment this generation can internalize as self-identification with citizenship.

"Gibbs did emphasize that when Obama faces re-election in 2012, DADT will have been repealed."

There will be no one event, after which the gays can say, "Now, we're accepted."

Obama is saying something when he tells us it's not for him to tell you to be patient...

"...anymore than it was for others to counsel patience to African-Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half century ago.

"But I say this: We have made progress, and we will make more. And I want you to know that I expect and hope to be judged not by words, not by promises that I made, but by promises that my administration keeps."
The LGBT community is expecting an emancipation proclamation that will make the world a safe place to be gay all at once.... and it's not going to happen. It can't happen, and holding Obama to that expectation is unfair to him and the people you convince that such a situation is even possible.

Celebrate the incremental successes, the repeal of DOMA and DADT... passage of ENDA and the hate crimes bill, because no single advance can deliver what we're looking for all at once.

"I'm not sure we should be applauding the president for passing the buck, however eloquently he is while he does so."
— Dan Savage, sex advice columnist

LGBT leadership will sell its community short if it should never celebrate until the battle is completely won.

Read more

Requisite Filipino prison tribute to Jacko

2009-06-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

"A tribute performed by 1,500 CPDRC Inmates on June 27, 2009 in memory of Michael Jackson. Completed in 10 hours after receiving word that the King of Pop passed away. May he always be remembered. 'Ben' and 'I'll be there' were sung by Michael when he was still younger! 'We are the World' was composed and organized by MJ."

Visit the site

The drag nuns were a nice touch.

Visit the site

What Can I Do to Help?

2009-06-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

Robert Reich asks us to consider policy before identity, details instead of slogans, and progress before taking credit.

The Big Guy minces words.

(Salon)

"People who voted for Barack Obama tend to fall into one of two camps: Trusters, who believe he's a good man with the right values and he's doing everything he can; and cynics, who have become disillusioned with his bailouts... cap-and-trade pollution permits... seeming reversals on eavesdropping... and squishiness on a public option.

"In my view, both positions are wrong. A new president — even one as talented and well-motivated as Obama — can't get a thing done in Washington unless the public is actively behind him."

— Robert Reich, little guy, big idea

Read more

Although my power of persuasion is more often dissuasive, I've been annoying people left and right, stranger and known, friend and foe, about the details of reform, instead of getting bogged down in securing my identity as a cynic, misfit, outsider, or radical.

Those roles are moving targets when single-payer orthodoxy can just as easily add up to federal subsidy of megalo-conglomerate corporate scions skiing down private runs in Switzerland. We're Gay Shame one day... hetero-normalist marriage-monger the next, because we want to win without knowing who we really are.

"As FDR said in the reelection campaign of 1936 when a lady insisted that if she were to vote for him he must commit to a long list of objectives, 'Ma'am, I want to do those things, but you must make me.'"

Go here to amplify the health insurance horror stories that make reform important.

The left is easily disheartened, if you don't speak their peculiar language, so much so that web comment sections are awash in single-payer supporters scorching public option people, and lowering cost takes a back seat to what we should call the plan to do so.

Somewhere, Kenneth Lay is Saying...

2009-06-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

"...do the honorable thing, Bernie. Fake your death. No one will begrudge a widow a private ceremony with a closed coffin."

Sentenced to 150 years, Madoff has spared the wife and kids.

Ruth and Ruthless $2.5 million goes a long way in proson.

(HP)

"The jailed Madoff already has taken a severe financial hit: Last week, a judge issued a preliminary $171 billion forfeiture order stripping Madoff of all his personal property, including real estate, investments, and $80 million in assets Ruth Madoff had claimed were hers. The order left her with $2.5 million."

"I am embarrassed and ashamed," she said. "Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused. The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years."

— Ruth Madoff

Read more about Ruth's near miss with justice.

Somewhere, Kenneth Lay is saying...

"Bernie, there's a secure, undisclosed penthouse in Dubai with your name on it... right next to mine... across from the one keeping Cheney's man-sized safe... safe."

Either way... after all, $2.5 million will go a long way, buying favors for Bernie in the penitentiary.

Read more about Bernie's sentencing.

Dowd Has a Shtick, and She's Sticking to It

2009-06-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Sanford, Ensign, Vitter, et al ought to shut up.

(HP)

"Sanford can be truly humble only if he stops dictating to others, who also have desires and weaknesses, how to behave in their private lives.

The Republican Party will never revive itself until its sanctimonious pantheon — Sanford, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Palin, Ensign, Vitter and hypocrites yet to be exposed — stop being two-faced."

— Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed Columnist NYTimes

Read more on Sanford, Enseign, Vitter, et al.

Dowd rarely has a point someone else hasn't already made, but this time she repeats a great one. The question isn't whether Mark Sanford values family, it's how many families he values.

It's just more hypocrisy from the Rapture-panic party arguing that same-sex marriage is dangerous because it MIGHT lead to legal polygamy.

Still... does Dowd EVER criticize a guy without taking a shot at his junk?

I think not.

"In a weepy, gothic unraveling, the South Carolina governor gave a press conference illustrating how smitten he was, not only with his Argentine amante, but with his own tenderness, his own pathos and his own feminine side.

"He got into trouble as a man and tried to get out as a woman."

Obviously, her signature jab at a man's masculinity is college-level rhetoric and embarrassing to read in a NYT opinion piece, but at least we expected from her, so you can skim the inevitability of it while looking for a more salient point... just in case she has one you didn't already read in someone else's column just last last week.

She's repetitive, and she borrows a lot... like a lot of us do... but she gets paid to do it.

Color me envy.

Read more

The Indirect Prophesy of Tim Pawlenty: Premonitions of Hypocrisy and Pain

2009-06-28T11:07:00.001-07:00

Gov. Pawlenty signs his own political suicide warrant.

(HP)

"Any time you have leading figures who are engaged in behavior that's sad and troubling and hypocritical, other people are going to look at that and say, 'Hmmm, they don't walk the walk.' And so the words and the actions don't ring true."

— Minnesota's Republican Governor Pawlenty

Read more about Pawlenty's Whack at Sanford

If there's ANYTHING we've learned during this endless parade of Republican hypocrisy-mongers out to burnish their crazy conservative cred on the shredded hope of their fallen, it's that a Rapture-ready End Times denizen like Pawlenty is most likely standing in line somewhere behind Sanford on a long walk of shame to a stage in front of the news cameras.

Here, Pawlenty joins the ranks of those who claim not to see the 50% divorce rate has ANYTHING to do with the institution of marriage... and he lines up with Tribulation-crazy lady Sen. Michelle Bachmann as they pledge to support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Minnesota.

See more of that crazy day

A comment like that can come only from someone completely out of touch with facts on the ground.

We need to realize these guys push legislation and proclamations that are better suited for characters who don't even intend to be here once they're disappeared in the twinkling of an eye... Raptured right when their bombs drop from the sky.

But... what if YOU're Left Behind?

The Rapture-panic party would withhold from us accessible healthcare, food safety, public education, and even basic human companionship... everyday necessities the heaven-bound simply don't believe WE'LL need when THEY're Taken Away.

Assimilated LGBTs on the Cusp of Ironic Acceptance

2009-06-28T03:55:00.000-07:00

Rite of passage: Beer-bongs and citizenship.

(Chron)

"Krambuhl, who was sipping lemonade enriched with vitamin V, said the mainstream might be overrated.

"'There's nothing to be gay about any more,' he lamented.

"A lot of people here aren't gay or lesbian at all," said Rick Collins, a computer consultant from San Francisco. "We've become somewhat assimilated, I guess."

Read more about how boring it is to be gay these days.

Crowds gathered on Pink Saturday, among Dykes on Bikes and beer-bongs. Once fierce, the LGBT community implores mainstream leadership to acknowledge its newly adopted brand of normalcy... while an indistinct sense of ennui, name-brand things, and married couples with children settle on a community that seems to realize that it left behind its soul in exchange for acceptance.

When all is said and done, the world wasn't changed by the gays as much as the gays were changed.

Read more

So-called Centrists Balk at Challenging Insurance Industry Status Quo

2009-06-27T23:02:00.000-07:00

Nelson: Numb on healthcare reform?

(HP)

"I do not think this is helpful. It doesn't move me one whit," Feinstein said. "They are spending a lot of money on something that is not productive."

— Sen. Feinstein (D-CA)

Have you looked at the surveys, DiFi?

MOST of us are spending a lot of money that is NOT productive.

Healthcare NOW... instead of insurance that never pays.

Read about Feinstein misjudging where the middle is.

"The strategist, who asked for anonymity because he was criticizing colleagues, said: 'These are friends of ours. I would much rather see a quiet call placed by Rahm Emanuel saying this isn't helpful. Instead, we try to decimate them?'"

— Anonymous sell-out

IF Rahm has made the call, it ain't working.

If he hasn't made the call, why not?

Make it happen, since it's as easy as a phone call from Rahm. Get these influence-peddling political favor-mongers to side with public healthcare, and there will be no need to decimate so-called friends.

Put up or shut up and get out of the way.

Read more about scared strategists also misjudging the middle.

"I get an election certificate from the people of Oregon," said Sen. Wyden, whose bipartisan health bill picked up its 14th co-sponsor last week. "As far as these ads are concerned, I pay them no attention."

— Sen. Wyden (D-Delusion)

The ads are neither FOR you nor TO you, Wyden. They're ABOUT you.

They're FOR the people of Oregon... who ARE paying attention... and YOU don't get that certificate you're taking about until AFTER they've decided if the ads are relevant or not.

Whether you think they are or not is practically immaterial.

Read more about Wyden misjudging the middle

AP Still Pushes the So-called Surge

2009-06-27T15:17:00.001-07:00

inSURGEnt messaging?

(HP)

"Iraq nearly slipped into civil war in 2006 and 2007, and tens of thousands of people died in attacks between Sunni extremists such as al-Qaida and Shiite militias and death squads. It was brought back from the brink by a huge inflow of U.S. troops in 2007 in what became known as the surge"

Read more on Iraqi pull-out

NOT

We already know the so-called surge in Iraq was a ruse to soothe Rapture-ready fanatics in America. It was nothing more than political cover for planeloads of cash the Bush administration dropped off on shrink-wrapped pallets... along dusty, Baghdad back roads... where tribal warlords picked it up in the back of rusty, well-armed Datsun pickup trucks.

Local elders used US taxpayer cash to employ their young, hungry militiamen to simply chill, to relax in the form of the Anbar Awakening.

The surge was cover for socialized peace. We know that.

Now... in Afghanistan...

"...former Pakistani intelligence officials say a deal's underway for Hekmatyar to call for an end to his Afghan insurgency, and be allowed to live above ground in Saudi Arabia with a budget of $85 million. At least one Afghan government official confirmed that a deal with Hekmatyar was being assembled."

Read more on Afghanistan truce

And, you know what I think.

The Obama administration's going to pay the Taliban to stop fighting. They're going to employ the Bush administration's socialized, Anbar-peace process, and disguise it as a military build-up to subdues an enemy... just so America's Tribulation-zealous Apocalypse-mongers "feel heard".

Gay Exorcism in Connecticut

2009-06-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

I thought the gays were totally into ...exorcizing...

(B'dump-bump, ((((ching!))))

...but I don't think it worked.

A straight man's shirt would have come un-tucked, with all that wrasslin' around for the Lord.

Fastidiousness under fire is a sure sign of the Tribulation.

As it happened in Connecticut, it's fair to say the passage of same-sex marriage does NOT make "the gay" alright for SOME people.

Oh, by the way, Happy Pink Saturday.

Read more on the biological argument

GayDar: Not just for gays.

"A man's chance of being gay is pretty low to begin with -- perhaps as low as 2% (lowered from 10% by researchers in the early 1990s). So having one older brother ups the chance to only about 2.6%.

"What it might mean: Psychological influences are probably not at work, because the pattern holds even for gay men who weren’t raised with their older brothers. Instead, the mother's womb might be key."

Read more on the biological argument

Ben, the two of us need look no more...

2009-06-27T01:04:00.000-07:00

"Ben" was my formative experience of Michael Jackson, and it left everything else that came afterward as somewhat of a diversion from my core impression of who he was. The rest was too aggressive by comparison.

Along with "These Boots are Made for Walkin'", by Nancy Sinatra, the song "Ben" made made a big impression on who I grew up to be.

Michael Jackson eventually grew up to be Ben and died hunted, wounded, and afraid, and I grew up somewhat afraid of what the world could do to a person like him.

With Sanford OUT! Romney Runs?

2009-06-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

A problem like Maria?
Not for Mitt!

(YouTube)

"Besides: Romney is a high profile supporter of 2010 gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman; she talks him up regularly in her campaign events, reminding supporters she worked for him at Bain Capital. Sets him up in a big delegate-rich state like CA pretty well, especially if she comes out a winner, some say.

"'Everybody naturally looks back to people who ran before,' says one Whitman backer. 'He always knows he can do bigger and better. He can run a company or a run the country."

Read more

Bush ran a company and a country... right into the ground.

When will the Rapture-ready GOP see the difference between a CEO and the executive branch of the US government?

One of them works for a BOARD of directors that has essentially appointed her or him to do their bidding for an extraordinary amount of money in no way commensurate with results.

The other works for a cabal of cronies who have essentially appointed her or him to do their bidding for an extraordinary amount of money not commensurate with results.

You don't want anyone coming into office with that much commensurate experience.

Besides, is work experience in the financial industry REALLY what we're looking for in a leader these days?

Don't we already have too many of them running the show as it is?

Read more

Critics of Camp Not Clear on the Concept

2009-06-26T14:21:00.001-07:00

Huffpo Poll: Craziest Queen!

(AP)

"Yet another reason why gay people will NEVER be taken seriously."

This is like saying the nice normal people who participate in Carnival will NEVER be taken seriously, just because they're dressed in crazy, sexualized costumes, that clowns ruin everything for everyone.

How can you hold a whole people hostage to YOUR impression of what some clownish celebrants make of themselves on their cultural holiday?

Leprechauns! Elves! ...and Faeries!

Oh, my!

If you're upset by the genderbending... then you've missed one of the major points of 40 years of gay pride... entirely. It doesn't affect you.

It's like the kid in school who can't cope in any civil way with the classmate who's a sissy.

So what?

He's a sissy! Get over it, and get on with your OWN life, instead of trying to ruin someone else's.

Why be so freaked out over crazy costumes... like the Rapture-panic crowd that wants to cancel Halloween because it's demonic?

It's a parade.

Relax.

Have fun.

Read more

See Senator Conrad (D-ND) Flip on Healthcare. Flip, Conrad! Flip!

2009-06-25T19:47:00.000-07:00

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-SD)

"Conrad ticked off the areas of agreement that were reached Monday. 'National structure: I believe to be effective there has to a national entity with state affiliates and those affiliates have to have the ability to regionalize. I think his concern there can be addressed,' said Conrad.

"'Second, he believes there needs to be national purchasing power. I think that's a good point that the national entity would be able to do purchasing on behalf of the state and regional affiliates and on behalf of the national entity itself.'"

Remember when cooperatives were another word for commie?

Sen. Conrad can call it a co-op if he wants, but if it's a fully funded public program regulated by the federal government, I don't care if he's mincing words over state and regional affiliates.

One of the right-wing's favorite whipping boys for socialized medicine has state affiliates.

http://www.nhs.uk/
http://www.wales.nhs.uk/
http://www.scot.nhs.uk/
http://www.n-i.nhs.uk/

If we're starting to talk semantics... calling the national public healthcare option something Conrad can swallow while saving face... he's making progress.

Read more

Fox News Viewer Emails To Shep Smith: "You Don't Belong Here"

2009-06-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

Shep Smith @ FOX Noose

Mr. Smith said, "There's a lot of money in opinion, and those guys are fascinating, terrific entertainers.

"This is a news organization. There can't be a Fox News without news."

One harassed news anchor in a zoo full of opinionated Armageddon-mongers does not a news organization make. Poor Shep is the token who risks a lot to present normalcy at FOX Noose, albeit to little effect in the big picture they present.

Besides, Murdoch's more liberal offerings are to liberalism what poppies are to the Islamofascist war against the West: the cash crop.

Ultimately, many of us are to blame, because we consume plenty of other FOX products that keep FOX Noose swinging, shows like the Simpsons, Lie to Me, Doll house, Fringe, Life on Mars, Fire Fly, Futurerama, Buffy, X-Files, Glee, Family Guy, Slumdog Millionaire, X-Men, Ice Age, Borat, Once, Marley and Me, Juno, Waitress, Little Miss Sunshine, The Darjeeling Limited, 28 Days Later, The Last King of Scotland, Garden State... and so on and so forth.

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