Left Leaning Brain

Fun in the economy or what I'm doing with my life

2012-02-01T16:36:00.000-08:00

I'm not getting depressed over our current congress critters, I'm getting angry. And what gets me real angry is that I know that nothing, and I mean nothing that we do will make any difference in the short or long term.
We have no money to buy these ~~idiots~~ assholes, no one liberal enough to run against all of them, and no hope that any of that will change.
I really feel like a chump because I joined the military with the belief that I might be helping my country. I served, got an honorable discharge and despite what JFK said, I want my country to serve me and all the rest of the people who live here. And this government is not doing that. Or even trying to fake it.
Who do I see about this?

— people are too worried about their own jobs to spend money on major purchases right now"

Own a small retail store in the sporting goods industry, and it's not just the major purchases that are not being made. Most people are cutting off all non-essential purchases. It's not getting better here in retail land and I don't expect it to for at least 6-12 months. I expect to loose my biz over this. Oh well could be worse, I could have a job with benefits and lose that, get unemployment and have that run out, then I'd really be screwed. Oh wait.....

I wrote this as a draft while back and now it has come true. My store is now closed. Maybe I'll get by, maybe not. Fuck conservatives.

Charities

2012-02-01T16:20:00.000-08:00

Pink ribbons.

They are supposed to mean that you support or care about research concerning breast cancer. That sure sounds like a good thing. The half of the worlds population with breasts probably are very concerned, the other half should be. Breast cancer kills. Out of the seven women in my and my mothers immediate family 2 of them have died from breast cancer and another has survived 45 years after being diagnosed. That's almost 50% of them have had breast cancer and of those 2/3 have died from it.
So what does this have to do with anything?
The Susan G. Komen foundation has just withdrawn their rather large amount of support from Planned Parenthood, which was used for breast cancer screening. This is after all the people who have paid for products and events to support helping to fight and find a cure for this horrible disease. Are they being robbed? Or at least deceived? I think so. And the kicker is that this is because Planned Parenthood does exactly that, they help people (women more so than men) plan parenthood, which many religious groups don't want women to do. They want no planning when it comes to pregnancy. These assholes wouldn't allow abortion when a woman's health is at stake or when she has been raped. They would rather she die or that her doctor would die than even a fetus that can not possibly live. This is one sick, fucked up point of view.

So I'm saying, don't support SGK. Boycott any pink ribbon products or events. Let the SGK foundation know what you think. As Tbogg writes you could make a direct donation and have a thank you card sent to the vp of SGK. Click on the link and get the details.

To summarize: Fuck these assholes.

Now That's Class Warfare

2012-01-11T15:31:00.000-08:00

An oldie but goodie.

From Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right:

Anytime a liberal points out that the wealthy are disproportionately benefiting from Bush’s tax policies, Republicans shout, “class warfare!”
In her book,A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century,Barbara Tuchman writes about a peasant revolt in 1358 that began in thevillage of St. Leu and spread throughout the Oise Valley.At one estate, the serfs sacked the manor house,killed the knight,and roasted him on a spit in front of his wife and kids.Then, after ten or twelve peasants violated the lady,with his children watching,they forced her to eat the roasted flesh of her husband and then killed her.
That is class warfare.

Arguing over the optimum marginal tax rate for the top one percent is not.

I like it. Life was probably pretty hard in 1358 for most people but when it got even harder, and just for the enjoyment of the wealthy, remedies could be found.

H/T to rirr at balloon-juice

Once More

2011-12-29T10:42:00.000-08:00

David Atkins does a spectacular takedown of libertarianism and the idea, "It works, it just has never been done correctly".
As messy as humans and their societies are, there are certain ideals that just don't work. Pure communism, libertarianism, religions as governing bodies. None of these work as open societies because they are never inclusive of all the people that live in a geographic region, nor do they work with human nature, rather they try to stifle it.

Vote. Always Vote.

2011-12-14T16:26:00.000-08:00

Charles P. Pierce

Remember that name. Read whatever he writes. Pay attention to what he writes.

His post today on voting and especially on voting rights. A thing of beauty.

The line.

Sorry, Lyndon, we overcame. And then we didn't. Let you down, big guy. (Click to see the whole post.)

Bit by Bit or the Drones Don't Fly Themselves

2011-12-12T18:43:00.000-08:00

The world is evolving, like it always does. Our constitution and bill of rights was pretty far ahead of the curve when written but it still had and still has holes. Part of that is the imperfection of the people writing it. Part is the fact that evolution is all around us. It is in biology, it is in technology, it is in the law.
We still have the 4th amendment as our basis for personal freedom. We have tried to give it away, see act, patriot, among other methods. It's still a pretty good law but it's interpretation maybe leaves something to be desired.
I once took an oath to uphold and defend the constitution and bill of rights. I placed myself under a different set of rules, stripping me of some of those rights to defend it because I felt it was important. My little part turned out to be not so big a deal and I have frequently wondered if it was worth it, but done is done. Protecting it is done bit by bit just as losing it's power is done bit by bit.

Is civilian surveillance by police drone one of those bits we are giving up? I think it is real possible the answer is yes.

A Nice Overview

2011-11-30T12:52:00.001-08:00

Commentator JD Rhoades had this to say over at Balloon-Juice

After Willie Horton ads, Swiftboating, GOP convention-goers waving purple band-aids to mock a veteran’s war wounds, birtherism, Ann Coulter saying the “only choice was whether to impeach or assassinate” President Clinton, Coulter claiming 9/11 widows were “enjoying their husband’s deaths,” Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease, ads falsely claiming Barack Obama favored “comprehensive sex education for Kindergartners,” Rand Paul supporters trying to stomp the head of a protester, ads claiming Kay Hagen was “godless,” Michelle Bachmann calling for an investigation of ‘un-American views” among the Congress, “If ballots don’t work, maybe bullets will,” “Obama hates white people,” ‘GET OFF MY PHONE YOU LITTLE PINHEAD!” “YOU LIE!”, wingnuts at FreeRepublic calling 11-year old Sasha Obama a “street whore” for wearing a peace sign on her t-shirt, outright lies about “death panels,” “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy,” cheering for executions, booing soldiers in war zones for being gay, comparing poor people to stray animals you shouldn’t feed, “’we’ve got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion,” supposed “Christians” suggesting that people pray for the President using Psalm 109:8 (“May his days be few; may another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow”) as a text, Limbaugh calling the First Lady “uppity,” and on and on and on, all without a single peep from the Right…They can take their whiny-ass bullshit about liberal “rudeness” and peddle it somewhere else. We ain’t buyin’ it here.

I'm a lot less civil in my tone, his version fills in the reason why.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T11:26:00.001-08:00

Charles P. Pierce is a national treasure. No doubt about it.
He does up a nice Thanksgiving post with an embedded video that should not be missed. So with a ten gallon hat tip to Charles

Enjoy.

Time is not on our side

2011-11-07T22:51:00.000-08:00

I think it is vitally important to understand the depth and width of the problems that we face as a culture. We have come pretty far down the road of if not outright lawlessness, outright rigging of the laws by the very small, very rich minority to screw the vast majority. It may or may not have been intentional but that is irrelevant. It may have been a big plan or just coincidence for the most part and that doesn't matter. We are at a crossroads right now, not only as a nation but as a member of the world. The world has gotten smaller and much more interconnected. The ripple effect no longer stops at a nations borders.

We have to grow up and become a nation of the world, not a nation that thinks it is the world. We outsource jobs to create crap, at a price that we can afford, because we refuse to raise wages to keep people working at a reasonable rate, so the rich can get richer. At some point the poor have nothing left to lose except their miserable lives. When the poor start paying that price what do the rich think the collateral damage be?

Big Finanice is Not your friend

2011-10-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Unless you are one of the 1%.

If you are one of the 99% there are many stories explaining why you and I are screwed. Why we have been screwed and why we will continue to be screwed. About as bad as it gets.
Here is one that explains most all of it.
What the wall street protesters are angry about

Screw the big banks

2011-10-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

Move your money.

It's that simple.
The big banks are going to continue to thumb their noses at the unwashed masses no matter what. They are going to continue to screw us, nickle ($5) and dime ($25) us to death. And they don't care if you go broke or die, all they want is your money.
It is not that hard to move but if enough of us do that the big banks will notice. Probably still won't care but so what. At least you won't be helping to keep them in the business of screwing their customers, one of which is you.
If you keep your money in a big bank move it to a credit union, smaller regional bank or from what I hear USAA is pretty good, if you qualify. I'm sure there are other banks like USAA, I just don't know of them.

99%

2011-10-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

If you have not seen We Are The 99% you should. If it does not get your blood boiling then you are part of the problem.

Here is the post that so far has gotten to me the most.

My name is Allison, I’m a 13 year old 8th grader. I only get a few hours of sleep at night, but I don’t tell my parents because they don’t need to know that I need sleeping pills. I’ve been showing symptoms of Schizophrenia but we can’t afford for me to go see a doctor about it. My parents get really scared when they have to pay the morage because it really cuts down on our money. I’ve stopped eating alot so there’s more food for everyone else.
My parents don’t know that I know we’re the 99%.

A play on words, but no one is playing

2011-09-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Poster jon at balloon-juice comes up with a great one.

It’s a death tax when the Federal Government takes some portion of the estate before it goes to the heirs.
It’s not a death tax when the hospital takes all of it.

We really are screwed.

2011-08-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

Over at Hullabaloo both digby and thereisnospoon have been getting right to the heart of the chief issue we face today. The worlds financial situation. Or maybe that should be the worlds financial implosion. Here is the takeaway graph from thereisnospoon today:

"It's high time that economists worldwide begin to envision a different way forward: a way for sovereigns to bypass reckless financial institutions and survive in the interdependent global economy without their help. A way, in other words, to truly allow banks that are too big to fail, to fail. A way to allow nations to tell investors that they will have to accept the consequences of their having taken the risk that comes with making money off interest with no labor involved. If not, the moral hazard of an increasingly powerful and unaccountable global investor elite will continue destroy sovereign nations socially, economically and spiritually. It's only going to get worse from here."

As long as the people are slaves to the big banks we will continue to be at risk for an epic depression, that looks to be much worse than the 1930's. At the time many more people worked in agrarian jobs and could, if not be totally self-sufficient, survive. And there were bread lines and a good percentage of people were continuously hungry. Now most food in the industrial countries comes from large corporations, owned by investors. They will not provide food for those who have no jobs, without being paid. Most of the supermarkets are owned by large corporations and they will not give away food. So when the depression hits the hardest and there are no jobs, savings are gone and a large segment of the population is starving and homeless, it will be chaos. A dangerous chaos.

The big problem as thereisnospoon pointed out is that the investment class has changed the definition of risk. It's no longer a position of possible loss, it is a position of permanent wealth.

2011-08-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

Digby gets it right once again.

The 2 most important graphs:

"Confidence? You'd be a fool to have confidence in the future. According to all of our most sagacious national commentators, the best case scenario is that our political leaders get past their minor differences on the scope of the cutting and come together to destroy the safety net. If they don't, well ... apparently it will be very, very bad.

Uncertainty? Average people don't have uncertainty. As far as they are concerned they're screwed no matter what happens. Our leadership demands that people buy into the silly notion that giving up their personal financial security is a patriotic duty and that high unemployment and underwater mortgages are niggling little problems that will be solved by putting more of their "skin in the game."

My questions are simple:

How long can we hold on?
How long are we expected to hold on?
Or are we expected to just fold and go away silently?
What does our government think is going to happen?

Someone stated the other day that it took 12 years to get over the depression. So, we learned those lessons, how to fix the economy, so why do we have to spend another 12 years doing it again? Are we really that stupid?
And the answer seems to be yes, we are just that stupid.
All that highfaluting Ivy league education our betters have, shot to hell. What a fucking waste.

Waiting for rain

2011-08-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

I''m waiting to see exactly what the debt ceiling bill actually does before I freak out. It sounds bad. Not as bad as it could be, so maybe better to say not so good. But what are/were the options?

Mostly it sounds like we kicked the can down the road and under the bus. That's sure not a horrible place to be when one has to play adult games with 4 yr olds. And not just any 4 yr old. These conservatards are stupid 4 yr olds. With an unreasonable attention span, a 1/4 track mind and pre-school run by morons.

So how do we win? We can't win, we can only survive till the children get sent to bed without supper. We let them make decisions and this is what we get for it.

So I'm waiting for rain, hoping that will cool things down a bit and that these children don't like to play in the rain.

Cops

2011-07-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

EBM posts another great one.
Cops. For most of us that should be a word that does not make one flinch, raise one's blood pressure, cause alarm, or most importantly piss you off. How many can say that word, cops, any more and not have one or more of those reactions? Not many people I know or see posting on websites. Not even some that work around cops. They don't trust cops. And we are not talking about criminals. We are talking about everyday people. When you see a cop car do you feel safer? I don't anymore. I feel a gut level fear. Because I don't know what they will do at any moment or situation. I know cops who have used deadly force. Said he didn't want to but the person knocked him down and attacked him with a chefs knife. From the sound of it he had no choice. But what about the person in EBM's post? A 17yr old on his bike? Who is handicapped and the officer knew it? Because the boy did not pay the officer enough respect? That's just bullshit, no other way to say it.
I have been around long enough and have paid enough attention to know that cops have been this way for a long time. Maybe since the beginning of time. It's time for this country to grow up. It's time for the cops to grow up. The government is in a declared war with it's citizens. It's called the war on drugs. It is also bullshit. It has not worked, it is not working and will never work. And it has created a situation where the cops think they are all on the correct side and we the citizens are on the wrong side. We are all guilty and it's only a matter of them catching us. At something. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people, it is a war. And we are combatants, like it or not.

Getting somewhat real.

2011-05-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

Reading some responses to the first rethug "debate" I am just amazed.

The stunning number of people who have no clue how modern societies exist and operate floor me. Not that they need to understand every intricate detail it's that they just seem to lack any overview whatsoever. Along with the lack of a view of history from a practical perspective.
They seem to want to go back to a time when everyone scratched out an existence from the ground, lived in little more than huts and quite a number of their kids died before puberty. It's such an appealing concept.
Yes money may be the root of all evil. It is also the root of a modern society. That doesn't make the argument for removing money, it makes the argument for removing evil. Not that that will ever happen but at least that should be the goal. What we have now is exactly the opposite.

Money and health beats poor and not.

2011-04-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

Came across this link from commenter Silver on Balloon-Juice.

It is a very good look at the health care system from an insider on why the free market is anything but and why it does not work at all for health care.

The New World Order

2011-04-05T11:15:00.000-07:00

We have to not only block this asshole Ryan's plan to kill old people. And I don't mean over 100 yrs old. I mean 55 and older. Talk about your death panels. Talk about healthcare rationing. As always the things that conservatives yell about the loudest are exactly the things they want to do to everyone other than themselves. We have to defeat these assholes. And they are ASSHOLES.
I am ashamed that people like Ryan actually get elected in this country in the 21st century. What's more the largest group of people that voted for him are the ones to be the most affected.

I used to think we were better than this. I'm not so sure about that any more. Hell, I am sure. We aren't better, we suck as a people. We have one of the largest economies in the world. California by itself is in the top ten economies. And all we can afford to do is to kill people. We supposedly can't feed ourselves, house ourselves, provide health care but we sure as fuck can kill people. It's what we do. We are the 24/7 death and destruction country. That's what we do. We kill other people. Up to now. And because it costs so much to do it to others we are now going to save money and do it here. Conservatives are trying to have our government do what it does best right here at home. Not with bullets or bombs but with selfishness and greed.

Kevin Drum. Short and to the point.

You don't know how glad I am not to have kids that would have to live in this kind of a world.

Libya

2011-03-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

In the end it is all about money/oil. We have put up with 40 yrs of rule of this ass. We killed one of his kids and almost him and it made no real difference inside his country although it seemed to have made him a slightly better neighbor. But we are staring down peak oil anywhere from now till a couple of decades and that’s scary to a country without the resources(us).
You want a large military? It uses a huge, huge amount of oil. You think your SUV gets crappy mileage, try a ship. Destroyer I was on during Vietnam would take on 20,000+ gallons every 2-3 days. There were over 600 ships in the navy at the time. (As of today 288 ships, 152 underway)
I’m sorry people this is about oil. Yes we are willing to pay for it but we want it, no 2 ways about it. We are not willing as a nation to conserve so we need a pretty large supply of oil. If it were about the crappy government of an asshole there are plenty of those around. Some have our stamp of approval on them, some do not. But we are going after the ones with the oil and doing nothing about the others.

It’s not about oil prices. Not in the way of controlling them. It’s about oil availability. Can we get what we want and can we maintain that for the foreseeable future?
Certainly there are political factors at work here. But with us foreign policy works in the realm of oil. My next door neighbor growing up was an 85 yr old retired Standard Oil executive who spoke 5 languages and traveled around the world securing oil access. He did this for most of the first half of the last century. From his stories I would say the only thing that has changed is some of the players and the amounts of the oil. Standard Oil knew 50-75 yrs ago that the US would in the not too distant future, not be an exporter of oil. And that has come to pass sometime ago. (We import over 13 million barrelsl/day. #1 in the world of oil importing)(We export 1 million barrels/day # 17)
Why do you think oil is not the issue?
We have all of a sudden gotten the freedom/democracy bug for everyone else? Our better angels are singing louder? Sorry I don’t buy it. World trade and world finance depend on oil. Oil for the freighters and planes that carry all the goods. Oil for all the plastics that the crap we buy is made from. Oil for all the cars, tanks and planes. Oil for the medicines. Oil for the fertilizers to grow the food. We cry about the rich/poor ratios here but the truly wealthy take a global view. They don’t just want everything of ours, they want everything.
And in our modern world oil is everything.
Oil touches everything. A hundred years ago it was railroads and oil was plentiful, in our back yards even. Today oil is what makes our world possible. Oil is what creates world and especially US security today. And it is getting worse for a couple of reasons.
1. For all intents and purposes the US does not conserve in any meaningful way.
2. With a good portion of the country being batshit crazy, number one will not change in the foreseeable future.
I asked the other day what if history doesn’t repeat itself? There are things drastically changing in our world that were not counted in the mix in the not too distant past. Peak oil for one. Freer travel and communications. Better health care.(not everywhere, like here, for sure) These are all things that have or should have affect on policy. What if all the short term thinking in the financial markets is because they don’t see the markets growing for much longer. Why do long term if you see long term as bad/non existent? Wouldn’t you then feel short term would be the only solution? I am of course talking short term in the relative sense of 10-30 yrs.
So history may repeat it self because people keep responding the same way to different stimulus. But the reaction may be different because the rules are changing.

Life in America

2011-03-17T00:29:00.000-07:00

We rant about history repeating itself but what if it actually doesn’t? Do you think the Kochsuckers don’t have a pretty good idea about how much oil is in the ground or how many trees it takes to make toilet paper? These are not stupid people, although they are evil. If they know approx how soon we run out of oil and they know the rest of the rich know what is keeping them from working with the rest of the rich to control resources? Getting as much as they can now, knowing that when the brown hits the whirlies they will have control and you and I will have nothing. That is different than history. We are at some point going to run out of the stuff that makes our lifestyle possible if we don’t get better at not using it up. These guys know this as well as you and me. Probably better because they own/control a lot of what is left. And they know very well how fast we are using it.

Hidden Taxes

2011-03-07T12:02:00.000-08:00

How Republicans Could Dramatically Undermine Health Reform Law Without A Fight

Read the above link. Read it and think about it. Read it and understand that this is not about taxes, adding or cutting them. It's about getting rid of the 1099 reporting. In other words it is about removing one more place to collect taxes from. It will lower tax revenues. So to offset this the republicans want to tax health care. Specifically they want to tax provisions of the new health care law that is being phased in over the next 3 years. From the middle class.
More tax for you, less tax for them. And the democrats seemingly want to go along.
Call. Call now. This is how they win. They beat around the edges long enough until there is no center left. You will be screwed. This is how politicians work, they seldom attack head on, that creates a fight. Chew at the edges, remove the benefits, until they get their greedy hands on every fucking thing.

Onward Wisconson

2011-02-20T11:53:00.000-08:00

I have not been posting in a while, because I am close to burnout.
But.
I have to link to Kay at balloon-juice and I am also going to post the entire wonderful thing here. I own a business, a very small business without employees. In the past I have owned another business with employees and I have managed many others in jobs. I am sure that I was not always able to treat my employees or those I managed with the same concept espoused here but I tried to. Employees are what make a business work. Or not work. They are the engine, not the spare tire.
Kay writes a brilliant piece here but I think it really is or should be about all employees, not just unions.

Ironworkers Local 8

by Kay

I was reading about the protests in Wisconsin, and I saw this photo. The gentleman on the left is a member of Iron Workers Local 8. That number made me stop and think. That number has meaning to me, because I know the history of labor unions in this country. It means nothing to conservative pundits or the vapid giggling morons who comprise the brain trust on Morning Joe, and it means nothing to the Governor of Wisconsin, but it resonates with me.

Eight is a low number. It’s a low number because that local was chartered a long time ago.

How long? This long:

Our official celebration was based on the charter issued by the International Association of Bridge and Structural Ironworkers of America on February 1, 1901 to the Housesmiths and Bridgemen’s Local Union No. 8 of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although the words “Housesmith’s and Bridgemen’s” were dropped long ago, that charter still hangs proudly in the board room of Local 8’s office in Milwaukee.

If you go to that local’s site, you’ll read this:

“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could not have existed had not labor first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.”
-Abraham Lincoln

This is the dictionary definition of collective bargaining:

Method whereby representatives of employees (unions) and employers negotiate the conditions of employment, normally resulting in a written contract setting forth the wages, hours, and other conditions to be observed for a stipulated period (e.g., 3 years). The term also applies to union-management dealings during the term of the agreement.

The phrase collective bargaining has a much larger meaning than “benefits”, and to watch Scott Walker with his vacant ideologue’s stare reciting bullet points over and over is to realize he has no idea what it means.

It means workers have a seat at the table. It’s a simple idea but it’s incredibly powerful. That’s what they’re defending.

Tens of thousands of people don’t get off their couch and camp out in a capitol building because of a dispute over paying 15% towards health insurance or paying 20%. Conservatives and their media allies would like to convince us they do, they’d like to convince us that this is about budget numbers or contract terms or benefits, but it isn’t.

Scott Walker is threatening to take away something very valuable. He’s telling them two things: your long labor history doesn’t matter, and you haven’t earned a seat at the table. They know better than that.

President Obama used the word “assault” because it’s accurate, within the history and context of labor unions. If you’re a person who is willfully or lazily pig-ignorant of that history, or a person who believes this country began with the election of Ronald Reagan, you’ll miss that, and you’ll start reciting deficit numbers and health insurance co-pays of union members as compared to non-union employees. But if you do that, you’ll be missing the point.

Negotiation is to unions what diplomacy is to nations. It’s what they work like hell at before they fail, and go to war. Union members aren’t proud of their ability to stop working and strike. Any idiot can start a war. A strike means negotiations failed. They’re proud of their ability to negotiate. They’re proud of that fact that they’re sitting in a hard-won seat at the table, and dealing as equals with the other representatives sitting at that table.

Scott Walker wouldn’t sit down with them. He denied them their history and the hard-won agency and dignity that comes with a seat at the table and in doing so threatened something much more valuable than wages or benefits. He refused to use diplomacy; refused to grant them the respect that dealing with them as equals confers, and went right to war. They know that. It’s why they turned out. President Obama chooses words very carefully. He knows it too.

We have come home

2010-11-08T13:21:00.000-08:00

John Cole does a what were you thinking post and does it ever get hot and heavy.

One of the comments,from tomvox1@48 writes we have become a nation of whiners. What has happened is that the Ugly American has decided to stay home. We are now inflicting the Ugly American syndrome on each other as well as the rest of the world.

Now you know why they like us so much. Not only do we strut, preen, shout and start wars everywhere else, we do it at home now.

Another Voice, Different Vantage

2010-11-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

My last post may be reflective of my mood which has been going downhill for a while, getting darker and darker.
If I actually look around I see that we have actually made a fair amount of progress in the last 2 years, but we have a long way to go and I am running out of time, not that quickly but it is going at a notable pace. I'd like to see some repudiation of the last 30 60 years of the political warfare that makes up this country. And looking back I do see some, but it has been a war and I am tired of warfare. There has been declared warfare, The War on Poverty(which we are losing/lost), The War on Drugs(also losing), and undeclared warfare, civil liberties, presidential power, media war on truth(being won with bullshit, so losing), financial controls, more commonly known as money rape(all but the most wealthy are losing). I'm sure I left out something but isn't that enough war?
And now I read a post from someone I've never read or heard of and maybe, just maybe this will allow me to believe that the end is a ~~little~~ lot farther away than I envisioned. That is the resilience of the oppressed, to stay in the fight and to, if not win, at least continue to make progress. After all that's why we are called progressives, we want to continue to move forward, even at a snails pace. A rear view mirror never shows the whole picture, only what we can focus on. So if backing up to a better time is your thing, remember you are never going to see the whole picture going in reverse and that better time really was not so much.

You can't stop progress, you can beat on it, you can slow it down, but contrary to what looks like your views you can't stop it. Because time runs only one way.
Forward.

H/T ABL at Balloon-Juice, Earthbound Misfit

Woe, oh woe is me

2010-11-04T19:25:00.000-07:00

I truly believe we are seeing the beginning of the end of our country. I suspect that we can get through the tough times ahead and that I am once again full of shit, but I wouldn't want to bet money on this country being anything like most of us hope it could be any time soon. We are seeing the government taking liberties with what's left of our liberties, we are seeing a country that is on the verge of bankruptcy of the ideals the made it a good place to immigrate to, legal or not. Those ideals that everyone has an opportunity to have a decent life, that we will protect those that are not there yet or never get there. We are seeing unprecedented greed from people that if their fortunes were cut 90% they would still have so much more than most of us. We are seeing politics (always a dirty underhanded sport) used as if a game at which there are few real life consequences for the pure power of it. Many of our neighbors seem to be so ignorant they can not see or accept facts or reality. The country is becoming more and more divided along the have and have not lines, with a lot of the have nots believing that the need to protect the haves or what little comes their way will be gone.
I give it 50 years. I hope I'm wrong. I most likely won't be here to see the disaster if it goes the way and takes the time I think it will because I will have passed my worm food date by then.
But maybe someone will come along and be a powerful enough force to make this work as a actual democracy.

It Really is Simple

2010-11-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Vote.

Vote Democratic.

Practice War, What is it good for?

2010-10-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

There have been many posts flying around about the nazi war reenactors, brought on by the idiot running in Ohio.
This is my take, which I posted as a comment at Balloon-Juice.

Study history. I can absolutely see that, there’s quite a bit to learn, if one tries. But reenact war? War is brutal, war is inhuman(not that we’ve let that stop us), war is not just death, it is also maiming and life altering for a very large percentage of the participants and spectators. War should be studied to see how not to have to do it, not to see how glorious it never, ever is. I do not understand how one learns this from reenacting battles without the bleeding. So what does one learn from reenacting?

How much fun wars are?
Wars are grave inhuman atrocities that sometimes have to be fought to keep them from being bigger and worse than they end up. Nothing more.

These times they are a changin..... and not for the best

2010-10-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

The bankers, lawyers, wall st casino and even retired judges are getting their cut, with no downside for them, so all is well.
There is almost no one who gives a damn about anyone without upper middle class or more money. The few that do are overworked, especially now. This economic system is rigged. It always has been and always will be. Every time a protection is enacted, a right established or re-enforced the conservatives/money grubbers rail against it. They say the world is going to hell. Hell in a capitalistic system can be many things but for most people it would be the lack of any ability to get ahead, even at a snails pace or at least stand still. The doubt and worry about everything on a day to day basis. I think we may have arrived in hell for that large segment of our population.

The Writing is Better, The Level of Disgust Probably the Same

2010-05-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

Digby, Digby, Digby

The arrogance, the privilege, the balls the size of Texas, it's a wonder they can get their whiny asses through the door.

There is nothing left to say about the financial mess, unless it's how to fix it.

dengre hits another one out of the park

2010-04-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

Confederate History Month: Stolen Labor
It's always good to get to the bottom of an issue

H/T Balloon Juice, always worth reading.

War, What Is It Good For?

2010-02-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

War is always an abomination. Yet war is sometimes necessary, the last resort of a people. It should never be the first.
People die in war. Usually lots of people. Almost always lots of innocent people.
A good leader works at never going to war, fights very hard to avoid war. A great leader works very hard to avoid having any of his or her citizens killed without absolute necessity.

But there are always people who advocate for war. They lead the shouting for war. And never intend to fight. Or heaven forbid take any actual risk of dying. They advocate that others should do the fighting and dying, just because. They shout for other people to be the victims because they don't have the courage of their convictions.

These people are cowards.

For a better take on this, Digby has the first and last word.
H/T Glen Greenwald via Atrois

Glen is Correct, Absolutly Correct

2010-01-29T12:23:00.000-08:00

Glen gets it right again.
Going to war in Iraq is the worst mistake this country has done in my lifetime. It was done for the wrong reasons, it was undertaken with false information and it was illegal. We can not just put it behind us, we must, as a country face this. We continue to be failures when we do not look inward and figure out that this stemmed from the same thought process that involved us in Vietnam. This political thought process has not been discredited, for there are way too many people who don't see or understand this as a mistake. We need to publicly fix responsibility for going to war with Iraq otherwise the idea that we can create war whenever and for any reason will not go away.

Actual Health Care??

2010-01-26T16:10:00.000-08:00

Over at Caltics soyinkafan has posted a valuable story on SB810, the single payer state senate bill for California.
Please read and act upon this story. It will not hurt the national health care situation at all and may actually help get national attention that a lot of people want and need proper health care not only in California but in this entire country.

HCR What We Need Now

2010-01-25T11:57:00.000-08:00

Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly has a great memo for anyone who as anything to do about health care reform. Please read it and pass it on.
And call your rep and senators. Today. And Tomorrow. And the next day...

Just What The Doctor Ordered

2010-01-22T20:22:00.000-08:00

Congress, Get You Some Balls

H/T to somebody, but I don't remember who or where.

Do The Right Thing

2010-01-21T23:16:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, Paul Krugman The straight shooter gets it once again.

And the tag line gets right to the point

"Ladies and gentlemen, the nation is waiting. Stop whining, and do what needs to be done."

TSA Training Academy Video

2010-01-20T13:18:00.000-08:00

Bad Tux found another good one. The TSA has conspired with Transport Canada to make a new training video.

Today Hope=Nope

2010-01-20T13:04:00.000-08:00

What is the plan to deal with healthcare now, considering that the senate is broken? It seems to me the house is broken as well what with 220 votes, only 3 more than necessary. We have clear majorities in both houses of congress, we have a democrat as president, and our elected reps can not get this done. I am ashamed of our country, I am ashamed that I am a citizen of this country, I am ashamed that I served in the armed forces. For the first time in my life I can see that it would absolutely be better for me to emigrate to another country, rather than stay here. I finally have a bit of an idea of what it must be like to decide to walk hundreds or thousands of miles, illegally cross international borders, and live a criminal life just for it to be a little better.

More Haiti

2010-01-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

Molly Hightower. I never met her, I had never even heard of her before the Haitian earthquake. But I have read her story and it is both devastatingly heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. At 22 she volunteered to work with orphans in Haiti and was living there. Teaching and helping those that need it most.
She was one of thousands killed in the devastation, when the school she worked and lived in collapsed. And her family has asked that any donations go to the organization she worked for.
That is Friends of the Orphans
This seems like so much more than just a worthwhile thing to do. So please if you can, help support not only the memory of such a fine person but those who need it most and have less than can be imagined.

Haiti

2010-01-14T19:23:00.001-08:00

I can not imagine what Haiti is like right now. I doubt that very many people could either. This poor country has been hit by so many natural disasters, political upheavals, and just plain crappy luck. They are getting over major hurricanes 5 and 2 years ago. And now a 7.0 earthquake.

I urge you to give what you can. All the agencies are asking for money instead of stuff so here is a number of places

American Friends Service Committee

Red Cross

Oxfam

Dr. Without Borders

What Ezra Said. Twice at Least

2009-12-25T12:58:00.000-08:00

Ezra has been a voice of reason in the HCR process. Many if not most of us want more. But we don't always get what we want. The last few decades it seems like we don't get anything, even that which we need. But this country got an xmas present yesterday, let's just hope that it's the gift that keeps on giving.

HCR

2009-12-17T18:58:00.000-08:00

There is no good side to this “bill”. This is a “good” start on the road to an acceptable program. It has been pointed out many places that the 3 big social programs passed in the last 70 years, Social Security, Civil Rights, Medicare all were crappy at their start. ALL of them. But they were a start. They are all better today. ALL of them. Could they be better? Hell yes they could. Hell, Civil Rights should never have even been needed if this were a more, I don’t even know what the words are, maybe better, nation. Could any of them be killed by any congress in the foreseeable future? No. Watered down maybe. See teabaggers saying don’t take away my medicare.
But humans, or at least americans seem to like the big whatever, the big fix it all at once, the all or nothing answer. But nothing works that way. Electricity production – Solar!, No, Wind!, No, Nuclear!, No, Clean Coal!, No, drill,drill, drill!, my car runs on water!. None of it is the answer by itself and some is BS. It takes baby steps and fighting each step of the way. This is the second biggest positive change in 45 years in the way we see this country. The other was when we started to take care of our seniors (medicare) and when we recognized that all animals born with human DNA were actually human (civil rights). Both of these were in the 60’s and took softening up of the legislature over years to get them to pass. I was young in the 60’s but I remember the fights and I didn’t understand why things shouldn’t be the way they ended up. And they didn’t go far enough. Now I understand. Some people are selfish, some are assholes, some are ignorant, some are all of these. Nothing has changed there in 50 or even in the last 5000 years. But this is our time. This is when we get to make change. Will it be enough? Hell no, it never is. Someone the other night accused me of pissing and moaning because I didn’t get the pony. My response was I was not buying a pony. I didn’t expect the pony. And I didn’t get pissed because I didn’t get the fucking pony. I am pissed because that’s what happens when I and millions of my closest friends get unnecessarily and selfishly screwed.

Not Pretty Pictures

2009-12-14T19:46:00.000-08:00

Want to see what a recession looks like?
Here's a chart of the unemployment info. Play it through and see what the fuss is about.

Us.

H/T to ari at Edge of the American West

Need To Know Why. This Is Your Answer

2009-12-07T18:24:00.000-08:00

Aimai over at Balloon-Juice has a great comment on what's going on in the senate for health care reform.
Finally an explanation.

Fun Today

2009-12-04T18:16:00.000-08:00

Over at Balloon-Juice commenter Dreggas posted the following story. It's probably not true but you never know. So for a good laugh and beware it's not monitor-keyboard safe if any thing is being ingested.
Gift Testing

On being poor, and not just a little bit

2009-11-16T15:40:00.000-08:00

Poor, the summation

This can only be from someone who is or has been there. If this feels real to you then you've most likely been there. If you can't imagine this reality then you're probably not close to being poor. If this is your nightmare, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you live in a country that thinks this is OK, that if you work harder everything will be alright. I'm not there. Yet. But I am as close as I've ever been. And I'm seeing myself slide down that rat hole no matter what I do. So I'm sorry.

Not Just Nuance- They are Pro-Coathanger

2009-11-13T12:30:00.000-08:00

tristero has it right

Words do matter and our use of them is important.

What most of the so called pro life segment wants is to control half of the populations bodies. How their bodies are used, how their bodies health is decided, how their very existence is controlled. Notice the major theme is control. It isn't right. Using some decided upon bullshit name (pro life) for the people who want to control a woman's body is not right either. So for me from here on I'm using, Pro-Coathanger.

Ah... screwed again

2009-11-13T00:12:00.000-08:00

Had an attorney tell me once that a settlement was only good when both sides felt like they got equally screwed.
If both sides thought it was a good deal they didn't need attorneys.
If one side was ecstatic and the other pissed then it should have gone to court.
So now we have laws being made that way. One side is ecstatic and the other is pissed. And screwed. Problem is, it's not the 2 political sides happy or screwed. It's the owners of the country that are getting screwed.
It's us. We're on the losing side of all the political settlements.

Thanks Lynn Woolsey

2009-11-10T04:09:00.000-08:00

The email that I sent to my representative:

Thank you for voting for health care reform. I wish the bill could be better. I wish it could happen a lot faster. I wish it would cover everyone. This is an issue that can not wait. As you well know people are dying directly due to the health care industry in this country. Why is that so hard for a great number of your fellow elected officials to understand? I would say that I can not believe that this many people are so selfish and heartless. But I know better. I know that the people who run the health care insurance industry don't care. I know that the people who run wall street and therefore affect the insurance people, don't care. They are greedy, selfish and heartless bastards and don't give a damn about anyone but themselves.

I'm glad that I served in the military. I didn't want to go. I did not believe in the war in Vietnam. But I volunteered anyway. I don't want kudos or thanks. It was what I was supposed to do. The congress people who voted against health care reform don't deserve the thanks of a great full nation. The deserve scorn and ridicule, because they didn't do what they were supposed to do. They voted for the benefit of a few greedy, selfish, heartless people who paid them to. We need better. We demand better.

Phillip

2009-10-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

This man speaks from the heart. He speaks of actual humans and their lives, not some ideological crap from a book.

H/T BarbinMD over at Kos

A Little Fun

2009-10-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

From Molly Ivors at Eschaton

If you'd like to see more here's AniMusic's channel on YouTube

GTFU

2009-10-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

America needs to realize that it is time. It's time to understand that we as a country are 233 years old. I'm not sure how that relates to a human lifetime. Dog years=7 human years, so maybe 10 nation years=1 human year for an nation age of 23, but it seems like our country is still in but should be out of puberty by now. With the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the president, maybe, just maybe the world has recognized that we have taken the important step of starting to grow the fuck up as a nation and as a people.

A Nobel Prize, Or, How The World Looks Thumbing It's Nose At Stupid

2009-10-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

Phil Nugent is so on the money I'm going to re-post his take here and link to it.

I'll freely admit that, when I turned on the computer this morning and saw the news that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, my first thought was that the Yes Men or some similar bunch of jokers must have hacked into the Yahoo! News page. A lot of talk has already been stirred up about how this is ridiculous because it amounts to awarding a major international humanitarian award to someone on the basis of lofty ambitions, idealistic goals, and inspiring speeches. You think? If you have to give someone an major international humanitarian award every year, then, given the state of the world, you're going to spend a lot of time making symbolic gestures. Read the list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates and the citations attached to their awards, and you will notice many variations on the phrase "for his/her/their efforts". Not successes, mind you, but efforts. Considering that Yasser Arafat got one, in tandem with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, for his "efforts to create peace in the Middle East", which some might argue is kind of like giving Susan Atkins an award as Midwife of the Year. One of the few instances when someone got it for a single concrete act came in 1973 when Henry Kissinger (and Lê Ðức Thọ, who had the grace to turn it down) won the prize for the cease-fire in the Vietnam War, and that has long been recognized as the greatest sick joke in the award's history.

The news does seem a little like a joke about the way that Obama seems (especially to his enemies) to seem to stride through life to the tune of Karen Carpenter singing "Close to You", just as (say) the story about Newt Gingrich having a pouty fit because he didn't get to spend a lot of snuggly alone time with President Clinton during the flight to Israeli for Rabin's funeral seemed like a joke about Gingrich's petty, megalomaniac instability (and the way that he himself derailed the budget shutdown by telling the story seemed like a joke about Clinton's ability to dance on the bodies of his own self-imploding enemies). In the end, though, who cares, really? Why, all those people who, this time last week, were practically dancing in the streets because Chicago wasn't going to get to host the Olympic games, which they saw as a slight to Obama. (Limbaugh and the dittoheads who have openly prayed for Obama to "fail" aren't kidding--they really don't want anything good to happen in this country for the next four years, lest he get some of the credit for it. This is their patriotism, the same kind of patriotism that, when George W. Bush was in office, took the form of condemning anyone who suggested that soldiers in combat zones overseas be given sufficient body armor and other protective resources, if the President and his Defense Secretary didn't want them to have it.) When the Olympic Committee is seen to be dissing Obama, wingnuts are suddenly hugely impressed by the wisdom of international deliberative bodies, but when the body in question is offering Obama a Nobel, it's probably only a matter of time before a meme is generated alleging that he only got the award after Roman Polanski put in a good word for him.

It is already being helpfully suggested that Obama should do the right thing and turn the prize down, pointing out that he is not (yet) worthy, and thus heading off "a Nobel backlash" that, writes Mickey Kaus, "seems non-farfetched." Really, you think so? You think that a man who has been routinely denounced for his steady availability (i.e., over-exposure) and bi-partisan reaching out (i.e., spinelessness, wresting defeat from the jaws of victory), and eloquence (i.e., empty fancy talk), all of which he brought to the job, like rain to the desert, after eight years of a rigid ideologue who hid behind his handlers and couldn't manage to be articulate enoug to even be coherent much of the time, could somehow fall under attack for having been given an impressive-sounding prize that he hasn't earned by a bunch of foreigners? Is it really so important to these people who gets the Nobel this year that they think Obama shouldn't have it on his mantle if he has the chance to stick it up there, or is this what it feels like: battered liberals doing what they've begun to accuse the President of doing, and trying to reach out to the very people who've been using them for pinatas by agreeing, hey--our guy ain't that great! I might agree if I thought the award going to Obama was an abomination, like the Medals of Freedom that Bush pinned on all his lackeys and toadies. But at worst it's just silly, albeit silly in a nice way, and anyway, it's not as if I'm the one who's being invited to drag my ass out to Oslo in the winter.

Of course, the people who'll yel loudest about it will be those who can't see a Nobel for the President as a nice thing for the country but as a slap in the face, because they think this democratically elected president who was voted into office in a landslide and is widely liked, if not loved, as a dictator whose existence is an implicit condemnation of their values and their way of life. (The very lowest of the low will see it mainly as more evidence that well-spoken black dudes just have everything handed to them.) And you know what? They're right, kind of, at least about the part regarding what's being implicitly condemned. The Nobel does have one very real purpose, and that is that, by giving it to the right person once in a while--a Dalai Lama, a Lech Wałęsa, a Desmond Tutu, an Al Gore--you can really piss off some people who richly deserve to be pissed off. The Committee has done its best to suggest that Obama was given the award because of the things he wants to do, but I suspect that he was given the award for something he is, or rather isn't: i.e.. he isn't George W. Bush, or Bush's designated successor. Which ought to be recognized as a very low bar, but there's more to it than that.

The Bush years should be--will be--remembered as the country's moral low point since the end of slavery, a time when an inane little man with no qualifications but his family connections lost a democratic election, was appointed to the job of leader of the free world anyway, by his father's old cronies and party colleagues and with the complicity and approval of the press, and then proceeded to spend his full term ignoring the needs of the country and its people while using the time to instead order up legal rationales for an imperial presidency dedicated to the justification of torture and wars of choice, while creating a climate of fear that was meant to provide a reason for all of it. It was a horror show, and for those of us not of boundless faith, there were moments during it when it felt as if it would never end and that the most rotten people in America had succeeded in permanently reshaping the country and its values to make a better climate for their lizard skins. This all must have been dismaying to the many people in Europe who love what this country is supposed to stand for, who have a special place in their hearts for its history and its stated ideals and principles, and who were especially saddened, in 2004, to see a man voted back into office as recompense for having been caught wiping the Constitution and his own beloved Holy Bible with his diarrhetic ass.

You don't hear much about it now, not in this country, not even from most Bush haters (who do have a lot else to focus on), but among Bush's crimes and atrocities, one of the greatest still has to be the way he took the moment after 9/11 when the whole world was offering America its condolences and tender best wishes and threw them down and danced on them with a stupid cackle, just to show his gym buddies how tough and "independent" he was. Just as Walesa, in the days when Poland was in lockdown, and Tutu, when apartheid was still the law of the land, were given the Peace Prize largely to show them the world's gratitude that there were living counter-examples to their own corrupt and degraded societies, Obama has been given the prize for letting the world breathe a sigh of relief at the news that, no, it isn't going to go on forever, that the people whose job it is to decide wanted it to stop. (Even though, Garry Wills recently pointed out, it hasn't yet stopped as thoroughly as it should. But that's another post.) In light of this, the award should rightly have been given, not to Obama, but to the voters of the United States, who made the real heroic choice last November. But to have done that would have come too close to admitting the real reasons for giving the prize to Obama, which would have amounted to saying aloud that America, from the moment that the Supreme Court decided that honor and intellectual decency were things that it would be happier without, to at least the 2006 midterms, seemed about as much of a lost cause as Poland under martial law and South Africa during apartheid. And you don't win a peace prize, or get chosen to distribute them, by saying things like that.

B of A or Brain of Ass

2009-09-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

Over at Blog on the Run this little tidbit about Bank of America should let you know a little of how the big boys ~~work~~ fuck us over. Be sure to click on the link which brings up the filing in Ohio. Good luck in keeping your blood pressure down.

Why Anti-Trust is a Key

2009-09-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Anti-trust is supposed to keep competition strong by not allowing domination of an industry by one or a few entities. The last 30-40 years have seen the basic end to this, not only in our country but in others as well. The following is a great summery of this, both how and why.
TAP - How Detroit Went Bankrupt by Barry C. Lynn
h/t TPM

The Speech We All Were Waiting For

2009-09-11T22:04:00.000-07:00

The presidents speech on Wed was a good speech, given the politics in this country. I particularly noticed these two paragraphs:

I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform. And ever since, nearly every President and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way. A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session.

Our collective failure to meet this challenge – year after year, decade after decade – has led us to a breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy.

One of the major problems is not even the bankruptcy problem, it is that without health care coverage we have to wait till problems become emergency room problems. That is they only get solved in emergency terms. You are sick but don't know why, so you go to the emergency room. They will save your life if possible to do in a day or a week. But long term chemo or radiation, probably not. Your kidneys have shut down, might you get dialysis, sure one time. Then what. You break an arm. It's probably set and cast. You come back to have the cast removed. Would there be any checking during the weeks of wearing the cast? To make sure the bone was set and healing properly. Probably not.
That's bad health care.
Is it the doctors fault? The hospitals fault? The patients fault? The insurance companies fault?
Actually as the president stated, it is our fault. We elected the people who vote against our interests, year after year, after year.....
Why? Well insurance and health care wasn't nearly as expensive when I was a youngster. We grew up being told we were the best, we could do no wrong. We took that to mean all things American were the best that things could be. We didn't follow politics and world events to see what other countries were doing, unless they seemed like they might threaten us. And mostly not even then. So we fell complacent, fat, dumb but somehow not all that happy. And now as so many of us are scrapping by, or even less than that we are in deep.
Little steps over 5 or 10 years will not be enough. We have seen what works. Maybe not every system will work here. But we know what does not work. The system we have now. Does. Not. Work. Even people who have good insurance don't always use it, because they know or believe their rates will increase or they will be denied or canceled.
We just spent enough to fund full single payer for everyone for a decade on a stimulus package that we should not have needed. We have spent enough in Iraq to also fund the same thing for an additional decade. Or we had a tax cut that would fund single payer for all for over a decade. So that's 3 decades of single payer that we spent already on crap that has not only not helped the vast majority, it has killed hundreds of thousands of people. And let's not forget that we pay a lot now for this crappy insurance, if we can get it.
The president is only partially correct. We are not at the breaking point, we have sailed past it, whistling in the dark that all is well.

Proper Blogging

2009-09-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

If you don't already - read Hulabaloo every day. Digby just gets it. And writes about all of it well.

Great health care reality ad

2009-09-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

Health care/health insurance is/should be one of our primary issues and we need all the help we can provide. The following group is one of those trying to help. Please watch the video and support it if you can.
Here is the link for the supporting group.
Health care reality

Great Writting on the Kennedys

2009-08-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

One of the best written pieces on the Kennedys, Anne Laurie nails it. Please read it if you haven't already.

The "Luck" of the Kennedys

Ted Kennedy 2/22/32 - 8/25/09 RIP

2009-08-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

I have not been a huge fan of the Kennedy clan over the years. But I have to say that he was a good guy. He went not just the extra mile, he went several extra. Two brothers shot down in the prime of life, in political life, just because they wanted to bring equality to all Americans. He was wealthy and did not need to spend his entire life trying to make people's lives better. He could have spent his life getting richer, thinking only about himself. He did not. If we had a few more politicians like him this country, this world would be a better place. It was a better place for him being here, even with all his human failings. He joined and served as an enlisted man in the Army, something I did not know till today. But even without military service he should always be remembered as a patriot, a person who loved his country. He may have been born into a family of privilege, and even enjoyed that privilege, but he did not act like a privileged person.
I am old enough to remember JFK being elected and assassinated. I watched and listened to Bobby Kennedy and was amazed at the depth and direction of the man. Ted lived up to that, his brothers would have been proud.

His great quote at his brother Robert's funeral:

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not'."

The words stand today and ring true about Ted, just like they did for Bobby.

Liberty and Health Care

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

I'd like to be a great writer. Well actually I'd like to be great at quite a few things. But as I'm just a blogger I get to link to great thinkers and writers. Not the same but there you are.

Read Digby today, hell read Digby everyday. It probably won't make you a better writer (it is possible!) but it will always be worth your time.
This one's a keeper:
What's So Good About It?

Some days I just have to wonder what is with our world? You know the one here in the states, the one where our education and political systems brings us a VP candidate who can't even speak in clear, understandable language. Where people rant against their fellow citizens having health care. Where slavery is not dead, it's just moved from the plantation to your boss's office. Your boss gets to keep you captive because otherwise you may not be able to keep living.

More about fascism

2009-08-08T23:08:00.001-07:00

Sara Robinson's post on fascism at FDL, http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/6987 has raised quite a stink.

Some of us think that it may be one of the most important posts ever. Some disagree.
But as I look around I see people who seem to be too stupid to find out any actual facts and to see that their only source of ~~facts~~ info is the Glen Bullshitters of the airwaves. As Sara's post is about the sinking of democracies by their crazy, seemingly disenfranchised citizens and we are right on schedule to be at the point of no return I think that should be depressing.
The only way to get past this and keep the country that we know is to recognize this, and now, so that we can act on it.
The only problem with the right wing talking about fascism is that they don't realize they are talking about themselves.

More H/T EB Misfit

Where to from here?

2009-08-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

Please read the following post at FDL by Sara Robinson
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/6987

With all the lies and fear mongering from the right on an issue that would help almost everyone in some way and most likely not harm anyone, what we're actually seeing is a desperate last grasp power grab. And that is truly depressing. I thought that is what was but Sara's post brings the history of this kind of movement front and center. I wish with every fiber of my being that it can be turned around, headed off, reasoned with, whatever. But I'm afraid that we won't be able to.
I think what we're seeing is the start of the death of a nation. I've never wanted so badly not to be an eye witness.

H/T Earth-Bound Misfit

Hilzoy!

2009-07-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

Hilzoy is leaving. We won't have her to listen to, to learn from, to grow from.
And we feel sorrow for that.
We sometimes forget that people have actual lives and they move onward and hopefully upward. We try new things, to keep us from going stale, to learn more, to keep from going nuts, and to just try new things or places.
I wish Hilzoy the best.
I have never met her but I feel like I have. She seems like a friend and it's hard to loose a friend, to know they won't be available.
Maybe she'll come back and brighten up the internet once again.
I sure hope so.

A rant for my birthday

2009-07-13T01:16:00.000-07:00

The murder in FL of the couple who have adopted the special needs kids. http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/12/florida.couple.slain/index.html
John at Balloon Juice has an interesting post http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=23991 about the death penalty and it's possible application in this case. I'm not disagreeing with him that this kind of crime makes one think of the death penalty, I'm just tired of being that kind of person.

The death penalty is not about justice, it's about retribution. And it's not that we don't all have it in all of us to want retribution, it should be about all of us being better humans. Or at least trying. I think we need to question why do some countries have many, many fewer murders per capita, and no death penalty? What is it about americans which makes at least some of us think that this works?
I like my country but we have some fucked up customs and practices that really screw up a lot of lives. The death penalty, crappy health care, the rich get richer and the rest screwed (that one probably is universal, just not as well practiced), great ideals for our government and laws, many of which are ignored in the execution, wars on everything (brute force sometimes works on pickle jars, not as well on most everything else), our general public political discourse seems to consist of lying long and hard enough to make people believe the lies. Is it like this everywhere or just some of our quaint traits?

Hilzoy neocons vindicated?

2009-06-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

Hilzoy on Finkelstein

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/06/neocons-vindicated.html#more
The end of the post sums it up nicely:

Towards the end of his article, Finkelstein writes:
"The mistake the neocons made is that we were not conservative enough, not patient enough. Such impatience with dictatorships is understandable, indeed laudable. But the frustrating truth is that there are limits to what can be achieved by outsiders. Instead we have to wait as national movements, one by one, stand up for their rights. And sometimes, tragically, we even have to stand aside as those movements are crushed by their oppressors."
Well, yes; that would be one way to put it. Another would be to say: neoconservatives were not just insufficiently patient; they were reckless beyond belief, willing to bring down unspeakable costs on other people without bothering to weigh the possibility that their simplistic and unrealistic views of the world might be wrong. If Mr. Finkelstein wants to change his ways and become more "patient", power to him. To my mind, though, this column, with its equally simplistic (and insulting) view of his opponents, shows that he has not changed nearly enough.

Mr. President

2009-06-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

I received an email from the president today asking for money. Here is my response:

Mr. President
I would like to contribute, but I like to eat and keep a roof over my head. I'd like to keep my small business but I'm not sure I can do that either. I know that you inherited this mess and the opposition party (I call them that because that's all they know how to do, oppose everything) is not making it easy, but it is your job to lead on all the problems, to provide solutions or to back the people who can.
BTW why do I need to donate money that I don't have to help you do the job that you get paid for? And for which I voted for you. And donated to help you get elected. And spent time helping to insure that people voted. I thought about 1100-1200 people work in the WH. I imagine most of them have other job priorities but isn't this one of the most important things you can do in your time as president?
So.
Health care. What we have now is so backwards in providing care that the only way to fix it is to start over. I have a saying that is of course over the top, but when I have a complete mess and the only way to fix it is to - nuke it. Take the situation back to zero and start over. So I "nuke" my office every so often. That's the concept that we need in health care. "Nuke it" and start over from scratch. Single payer, universal health care for all citizens. Roll Medicare, all the state programs into one, single payer system, like the Canadian or almost any of the European/Australian systems. Take health care away from business, both in the purchasing and supplying.
So here's what I say .... Screw the insurance companies. They've had years/decades to make this better. But they went the other way. It is now time for all the citizens of this country to join the 21st century and have actual health care.
And in case you are wondering, no I don't have, nor can I afford health insurance. I am a few years away from Medicare, which has anyway been limited by congress at the request of the insurance industry so that they can sell supplemental policies. Once again screw the insurance companies. They've made their billions at our expense.

It was our turn. We spoke out, very loud. We donated. We trusted and continue to trust that you will do your job. But it is now your turn.
Thank You.
Ruckus

Perplexed

2009-06-10T01:47:00.000-07:00

I don't get conservatives. They seem to want to take away liberties, freedoms, and now even life itself. Well not all life, only humane, caring doctors. They seem to want to suffer even more in life and to make others suffer.
UPDATE - looks like not just Doctors. http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5702
So does anyone with an once of sense now have to look out for (wackos) terrorists on every street corner?

I'd say the problem is Christian religion. Or maybe all religions, but look at the Christian religion as that seems to be the religion of choice for conservatives. Maybe it's the suffering thing, for we must all suffer for the sins of humanity. What a load of crap. Unless you believe that there are only a finite number of souls and we are all reincarnated. I wasn't there, I was born in the last century, not 20 of them ago. I may have some responsibility for Bush being president as I didn't work hard enough to not get him elected, (oh wait I believe that he was appointed, anointed or some such).
What is it that makes someone so selfish, so inhumane, so..... well un-christian? Do they even read the book they profess to adore, especially the part about oh I don't know, Christ?
I have been looking off and on for about 50 years for the answers to this and I haven't heard or found any. When I was in bible study and actually read the book (10-11 years old) and found it to be, well bullshit. This is not a book about how to live your life, it's about how people with limited education, no scientific knowledge perceived the world. It seems that with knowledge the world is or should be a less scary place, but religion has to keep it scary or no one would follow. And not only scary but that what little piece of it someone has will be taken away if they don't stay scared.
So now our politics are not only infused with this crap, it has totally affected our lives. We can't have health care for all, not enough suffering. We must wage war, not only against other cultures, but even within our own culture. The war on drugs, the war on abortion (and make no mistake it is a war), what is the desired end result?
I am asking questions because I don't see anyone else asking them. I don't have answers but I'd like to hear if you do.

Freedom - a long rant about the basics

2009-06-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

Our freedoms and ideals, that we used to take for granted, if not gone, are eroding rapidly.

Innocent people now have to fear having their houses broken into, not by common criminals but by those thought to protect us, the police. Police who use overwhelming force, wear masks, have no name tags or badges. This is not happening everywhere but it is happening, to innocent people, to mayors of cities. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012302935_pf.html
The police cover it up or arrest people on bogus charges. Mostly this seems to happen due to the "War on Drugs", a futile prohibition which has cost lives, families and futures.
Now that we know that we were/are being spied upon by our government should we worry that this won't be the only reason? Of course they're not all storm troopers - http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/01/22/metro.hero/

We find that our leaders failing on such personal levels as paying taxes, which the average citizen doesn't get away with. Our large corporate heads demand outrageous salaries and bonuses with no responsibility for these sums, their only allegiance is to themselves and maybe their shareholders. These people are supposed to be leaders as well and they have failed miserably, just like the majority of our politicians.

We used to at least think that some of our national leaders could be trusted to have the people's best interest at heart and mind but mostly they have quietly, and not so quietly removed or devalued most of our ideals over the last few decades, with the convoluted legislation and regulations they have enacted. And with party rules that help keep out only the "approved candidates".
I wonder how many of the politicians even know all the ins and outs of the laws they have voted on. I wonder how many have even read the entire bills. Many of the bills are hundreds of pages long or are so vague in their language that there is never agreement exactly what they say. Or they leave the actual rule making up to departments, like the IRS, Treasury (bank/wall street bailout), and we see how good that's worked out.

So my questions are:
Has it always been this way and are we only now becoming more informed (not by the MSM of course), or at least more aware? Or as I believe we have been sinking into the cesspool bit by bit until the overwhelming stench has awoken more and more of us.

What can we do about this as a nation of , for all intents and purposes, 2 political parties, one of which has gone batshit crazy. I mean we all expect politicians to lie to us, just not so blatantly and with so little understanding that there is public proof of their lies. Of course we actively campaign for Democrats but is that enough? And are they enough?

A Nation of Laws, Not of Ignorance

2009-05-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

As always Marcy has the goods.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/31/richard-clarke-reminds-cheney-and-condi-of-their-incompetence/

The level of lawlessness that Bush/Chaney exhibited will take time to unfold and deal with but as we continue to see the pieces fall into place the actual evidence will become overwhelming. And undeniable to all but the total fanatics.

Time Flies While We're Having Fun

2009-05-31T13:44:00.000-07:00

This is the best summary of the last 60-70 years that I have seen and I wish I'd written it
http://eb-misfit-2.blogspot.com/2009/05/greatest-security-threat-to-our-nation.html

Preemptive Whatever

2009-05-19T01:05:00.000-07:00

Digby and her reader Sleon made some great points here: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/bush-doctrine-of-torture-by-digby.html

I know that this has been said before but I'm just wondering - if one were to accept the premise that "preemptive war" is OK against other nations wouldn't it logically follow if taken to the end of that path, that the concept of preemptive action is then OK against citizens of say, this country? One might call it a "war on drugs" or a "war on poverty". Who the combatants are is only then a matter of semantics and how they are treated is of no concern. After all they are combatants, not people. So the point of the above link is that torture is OK follows not just for foreign countries but anyone who does not agree.

Maybe there really was an axis of evil, we were just looking in the wrong direction. After all the first thing magicians learn is misdirection.

Rule by Human Law

2009-04-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

The price of having a theocracy is that we give up the freedom to be moral of our own volition. We give up the right to be individual, to make moral decisions for ourselves, to be human and to answer to each other when we don't measure up. We are supposed to answer to a higher, unseen power, because we are supposedly not capable of making and answering for those decisions.

So in a theocracy, moral structure is given up to blind faith that the religion knows best. But which religion is best? Better question, which version of which religion is best? And how does a religion change when it's discovered that what went before is wrong and needs to change? Of course the answer to that is not well at all.

In a sheltered community of like minded people a theocracy can and they have worked because the inhabitants are willing to live under that structure. Of course as the community grows the moral structure of a theocracy starts to bind some of the subjects and they protest. And the end of the community is in sight.

So in a defining moment in human history the founding fathers figured out that even though the majority of them were religious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States) they should form a government that would not be a theocracy nor have a state or sanctioned religion. Because this would be a nation of men (and women), who ruled for each other, using the rule of law, not the rule of faith.

The rule of law is for and about the community of all of us and the rule of faith is for those that believe.

How

2009-01-24T00:06:00.000-08:00

How does a person make the decision that torture is OK? I can not get behind the idea that someone can have a level of fear that it's OK to throw away your moral compass. I'm sure some people don't have such a thing as a moral compass, but still, most do.
What does it take to decide that you're no better than you imagine your worst enemies to be? Can it only be fear of the unknown? I have been in life and death situations before and never had a level of fear that ripped away my moral compass. And I did not get my moral compass from religion nor from an upbringing with a lot of guidance in that area. And yet it seems like a pretty strong, sound system. And I don't consider myself anything out of the ordinary.

So, what does it take?

Another take from Andrew:

Does torture become something less awful when we do it? Is it a function of "paranoia" to worry about it when it's done by Americans or Brits? When a "good man" like George W. Bush does it? When a personally humane person like Donald Rumsfeld does it? When we know our motives are good ones? Orwell's answer is categorical. That's why he set Nineteen-Eighty-Four in his native England:
The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else.
Do you believe that or not? Churchill didn't, which is why, despite a 9/11 every week in London during the Blitz, he never capitulated to the evil he was fighting against. Bush and Cheney, in contrast, made it standard operating procedure after one attack by people armed with nothing but box-cutters and our fear. History, as John Ashcroft once said, will not be kind.

Link here http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2224950/39987909

A New Day

2009-01-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

We've all been talking about it, and it's getting very close. And it would be a shame that we expect so much and then become disappointed, discouraged, and begin to feel hopeless.

There is much to be overjoyed about. I was a child but I remember JFK running for president, with all the negitive crap that was being spread. The great speeches, the person he was overcame all that. The last year or so has seen many similarities. But JFK had his warts that we saw as time went on and we will see Obama's as well.

Still... This is the most exciting history that I've seen in my life. I used to say my grandfather was born almost before cars were invented and lived to see 2 world wars and a man on the moon and that this was an immense amount of history in one lifetime. I think we are topping that on the 20th. We have a chance to reboot our country, not quite a do over but we never really get those in real life.

I am hopeful and yet reserved. I owned a business that survived during 2 large recessions and now own another. I'm not sure that it will survive because this recession seems much worse. I worry every day that everything will be wiped out and years of effort will be down the drain.

Still... It'll be a new day and I can only be hopeful. Things will change, they always do. I'm just thinking that for all of us having to pay the economic price for the crappy politics we did not have to pay an even higher price. Many have done just that and we should never forget that.

To January 20th! Cheers!