Helen Thomas’s New Book Is Coming…

…and unlike Sarah Palin’s offering, it will not set records. Unlike Palin’s book, -it is not a PR exercise: it is a book written by one of the most important ground-level observers and formidable assessors of the White House for 50 years. The nation clearly wants to know more about Sarah Palin “spinning” her revealingly dismal interview with Katie Couric, and not a closer look at the working of all administrations that actually occupied the house that Palin childishly covets and petulantly insists she deserves to live in.

The release of these two books offers us a chance to take a real good look at ourselves as a nation. Their respective publication is an indictment of our lack of focus on things that are grounded in reality versus things that are created to appeal to our desires, insecurities and weaknesses: We want pretty people to be good and smart, after all, if they’re not, what does that say about us for liking them?

It would be nice if someone with Sarah Palin’s looks, background and experience; a child of teachers, a beauty queen, a parent, a woman who sought state office and attained it, was actually a capable leader and dedicated public servant –but she’s not. All the pretending and best PR won’t make her into anything other than the bumbling out-of-her-element wannabe that Charlie Gibson interviewed last year. All she remains is the walking remnant of that failed GOP grab at the national female vote made in hopes of capturing Hillary Clinton’s supporters. In this way, she’s as counterfeit and ceremonially significant as RNC Chair Michael Steele. Steele is illegitimate for reasons I trust are too obvious to you (and frankly too embarrassing) for me to go into here.

Helen Thomas continues to speak the truth to power, even though few will listen. Helen Thomas will never be as nice to look at or as pleasant to listen to as any of the women on News Cable Networks, whether it’s the smiling peroxide automatons on Fox “News,” or even someone with indisputable intellect like Campbell Brown. Let’s face it; we just don’t listen to unattractive people, specifically unattractive women on TV.

Imagine if Abraham Lincoln or Mother Theresa’s worth, their very ability to be heard, had been dependent on their looks, or their entertainment appeal?

We are a nation that can’t handle information unless it’s wrapped up in a superficially appealing package. The news anchors, talking heads and politicians get better and better looking with every passing decade. With the advent of Kennedy and Reagan, Presidents had to become bona fide media stars on par with actual media stars in movies and TV: pleasing to the ear and eye, inoffensive to the mind. Their policies, (for better or for worse in either case) were secondary to their looks and “feel.”

We hear less and less important things in direct proportion to the appeal of the speaker.

As for reading? Sarah Palin’s book is setting sales records.
It appears America would rather read the boasts of an attractive, appealing but superficial pretender who quit her duly elected office in hopes of being entrusted with more responsibility and power, than read the critical thoughts and painful first-person observations of someone (I can only hope,) was much closer to the White House than Sarah Palin will ever get to be.

-SJ

The Long Road

I'm tired. As I'm sure our regular readers (all 6 of you) have noticed, the pace of the posts here has slackened considerably. There a few reasons for that, but one of the biggest is just that I'm tired. I'm tired of beating my head against a wall to no effect. I'm tired of the nonsense that passes for political reporting these days (I think I might shoot myself if I am subjected to one more Sarah Palin story. Sarah Palin, really??? Who gives a sh*t what she's doing.). I'm tired of the lack of action by our government when literally thousands of people a year are dying due to lack of affordable health care I'm tired of pointing out the same issues over and over again. How many times can I bemoan the quagmire in Afghanistan? How many times can I complain about the ignorant people who apparently feel it's their lives work to deny the civil rights to their fellow Americans? How many examples of outright criminal behavior by our elected officials have to be shown before something is done? How many times does our government have to ignore the Constitution before the document becomes meaningless?

I haven't given up my belief that we can be a better country. I'm just disgusted with the pace of progress. Why do most of our politicians have to act like 5 year olds (screw you guys, I'm going home)? Why does political commentary have to devolve into name calling and attempted jokes (Beck, O'Reilly, Olberman, I'm talking to you). If our politicians don't take the future of the country seriously, then you would hope that at least the press would. You'd be wrong. Why are the NewsHour and Bill Moyer's Journal the only places to get an honest look at the issues? Why has politics devolved into entertainment? I'm tired of trying to search out a serious look at the issues. It's almost as if everyone treats this as one big game. I would like to remind them that peoples lives are at stake here, but what would be the point?

How much time will our supposed journalists and politicians spend on whether the President bowing to the Emperor of Japan was appropriate or not? How time will be spent on whether Sarah Palin is a viable candidate for President? How much time will be spent on arguing semantics and appearances as opposed to actual policies? How many times will "journalists" spend laughing at a joke they tell or a joke some else tells? How much time will they all spend trying to "out clever" each other?

All of it just wears me down. I'm tired of trying to talk about issues when the people who can actually do something about it appear to be so willing to avoid them. I'm sure I'll get back to writing soon, but trust me, at this point I'm not in much of a mood to continue to piss into the wind. It's a sad day when you come the realization that the Constitution isn't worth the paper it's written on and that the politicians in this country don't seem to care. It's a sad day when journalism in this country has been lowered to the level of bad entertainment. It's a sad day when the people of this country can't get the news without a wink and a elbow. It's a sad day when the helpless, hungry and homeless are relegated to also ran status because they don't make good copy.

I'm tired. Very tired.

Crystal Persuasion

The folks over at Fox are beside themselves over the results in New Jersey and Virginia last night. They will be on the TV today talking about how this is a clear repudiation of the Obama agenda and how this bodes well for the GOP in 2010 and 2012. Of course they will forget to mention that the only election that might affect the Obama agenda went to the the Democrats.

NY-23 went to a Democratic candidate for the first time in over 150 years. The Republicans (Palin, Pawlenty, etc.) decided that their candidate wasn't conservative enough and decided to back the Conservative party candidate even though he didn't live in the district and didn't know anything about the district. The military base is one of the biggest employers in the district, but the Conservative party candidate didn't even know there was a military base there. The Republican leadership decided that there was no place in the party for a "moderate" Republican. They didn't care that their candidate was basically a carpet bagger. They only cared that he was a Tea Bagger.

The exit polls in New Jersey and Virginia show that a majority of those voters approve of the President. These races were decided by local issues. These are tough economic times and people do vote with their pocket books. We have a clear example of that from last November. In Virginia the Democrats have controlled the Governorship for the last eight years in which the state, along with the rest of the country, has swung from recession to boom times back to recession. The voters of the state decided that they wanted to try something else at the state level. They were not voting for or against the Obama agenda (I take that back. Of course some were voting against the Obama agenda, but they would do so in an election for dog catcher as well). The same is true of New Jersey.

The elections of 2010 will be a better barometer of what the country thinks of the President. Those elections will have a direct effect on his ability to push his agenda through. Health Care reform has to pass and the economy (read unemployment numbers) has to begin to show a real turnaround. If those things happen, the Democrats will do fairly well in next years elections. If they don't, then the Democratic majority in the House will be in jeopardy. The war in Afghanistan will have little effect because the Republicans are actually pushing for more troops, while the majority of the country has very little stomach for that.

As is the case in most elections, however, people vote with their pocketbooks. If the President can convince the majority of Americans that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and (to borrow a line from George Bush Sr.) to stay the course, the Democrats should be able to hold on to their margins in the House and Senate. If the Republicans can shape the debate to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Democratic leadership then the Republicans may well find themselves back in control of Congress and with a much smaller minority in the Senate.

My biggest disappointment over the results of yesterdays elections was the fact that Maine made it 0-31 when same sex marriage initiatives face the voters. I have already written on this subject but each time it comes up it just makes my blood boil. Why do Republicans, who claim to be champions of individual liberty and less government intrusion in our lives, continue to revel in denying a basic human right to citizens of this country? Why would those who believe in "family values" deny people the right to start a family of their own? Why is it anybodies business if two consenting adults want to get married? And why have voters continually taken away a right that has been guaranteed by either the courts or state legislature? Why don't we just start repealing rights that we don't like? There's a justice of the peace in Louisiana who wouldn't mind repealing Loving v. Virgina. Perhaps the Civil Rights Act or Voting Rights Act should be repealed as well. I'm sure there are many that aren't particularly thrilled with the 24th amendment. Perhaps women shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a voting booth considering how fragile and emotional they are. This is all complete nonsense. I have no idea how a nation that prides itself on personal freedom can continue to treat a selected portion of it's citizens as if they are not worthy of the same rights and freedoms as everyone else. It's just plain shameful.

I have very conflicted feelings about Thomas Jefferson, but there is one thing cannot be disputed and that was his gift with words. I'll end this particular rant with one the most famous sentences in the English language. It was mainly the work of Jefferson (with some slight revisions from John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, to name two) and although the idea had been in print before, it had never been and probably has never been stated more eloquently and clearly. One of these days we'll live up to this, but unfortunately, it's not today. And I quote the good gentlemen from Virgina,

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

So What Are You Dicks Smiling About?

This is an appropriately profanity-laden post, about a profane situation. I still don’t support the TARP. I’d like to tell President Obama that I don’t give a shit if it’s working.

Why?

Because of these greedy motherfuckers pictured right here.

Our jobless rate, being what it is, gives no cause for celebration.

Yahoo! Finance reported Wednesday that as of the close of the bell, the Dow has hit five figures again, a number not seen in over 12 months. They reported that “investors can start focusing on the next benchmark for the market's recovery.”

Please.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been the market’s most widely feared, revered and accepted barometer for decades. Like sedimentary layers that illustrate flush wet fertile years versus periods of rainless drought, trending the DJIA will show us the last century’s worst financial crises against its greatest stretches of prosperity... for some. It’s like the way counting tree rings won’t tell you a thing about disease in primates, only if they had more or less water to drink.

Joblessness is here to stay. Many jobs shed across economic sectors may in fact be permanent in America. There is a consumer credit and loan crisis in the offing once the rate and total number of defaults on individual credit cards accounts hits a point of no return. -I’d say “tipping point” but I feel like Malcolm Gladwell has that term copyrighted, and in any case I always laugh when people repeatedly throw it in conversation as if they’re citing some great work in philosophy.

Everyone in government last year, from George W. Bush to Hank Paulson down to the lowliest Democratic junior Congressman managed to convince every poor schmuck, working-class schmendrick, and hapless debtor treading water in America to ignore the foreclosure sign on their lawn, but also that AIG’s, Bank of America’s and even Goldman Sach’s* pain was also somehow their own. Now that these monstrous financial institutions are repeatedly posting profits, their joy is strangely not changing the fortunes of the people who footed the bill for their massive rescues or supported their restructuring. Not one person’s immediate situation is changed by the Dow’s rise yesterday. If you lost your job, the 10,000 point Dow is not calling you on the phone to offer you a new one.

Quite the opposite:

I just got a letter from Bank of America two days ago; they are amending the agreement they made with me on a fixed rate loan that they repeatedly assured me would never change. I called them and asked: “The term fixed rate doesn’t mean anything when you say it, does it?” The woman on the other end of the phone actually laughed. I respected her not being able to hold in a chuckle at a sucker’s expense, just as she probably knows I would’ve choked the life out of her had she been standing in front of me.

I am paying tax dollars to stabilize financial institutions that are turning around and raising interest rates on me.

And where the fuck is Glenn Beck’s outrage now? -Oh that’s right, Glenn Beck passionately argued for AIG keeping their bonuses, -and why not? Glenn Beck is rich. He won’t be crying any of his theatrical tears on TV for you, or for me or for anybody that does the actual living and dying in America at the whims of banks. They’ll compare President Obama to Adolf Hitler, but neither he, nor anyone at Fox “News” Channel will ever go after the finance and banking corporations that make life miserable for working class Americans. They will never decry the subsidies and corporate welfare that keeps the downtrodden, stepped-upon.

So I ask again; to every smug jackass on the NYSE trading floor, sitting behind four screens watching indexes, I say again to every asshole in finance whose livelihood we saved with our tax dollars last fall who:

-won’t create a job;
-won’t pull a family out of foreclosure;
-won’t even pay their proportionate share of taxes:

Just what are you dicks smiling about?

-Oh right, you’re fucking us over again, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
That’s what you’re smiling about.

I said it last year and I’ll say it again, tax money should go to help the actual individual people in trouble who “owe” the money that “imperils” financial institutions, it should not go to the finance, insurance and investment entities who put Americans in the hole with variable APRs, sub prime loans, escalating mortgages. It’s their own money, Americans had to put it up, why can’t it go to helping them first? For once, I’d like to hear somebody admit, sincerely and without qualification, that deregulation was a bad idea. I’d like to hear it from all the politicians who supported it for the last 25 years.

For once I’d like to see an economic initiative trickle up, not down.

But financial institutions would never support anything that equitable and just, would they? It practically sounds like agreeing to be pissed upon from up high doesn’t it?

It sounds like what is always happening in America.

-SJ

* Goldman Sachs is about to report a tripling in profits compared to one year ago according the Wall street Journal yesterday morning.

Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot...

But honestly, I don't think that he should be denied the right to be an owner of an NFL team. Rush is constantly pushing the envelope in his commentary every day, but let's face it, he's basically an entertainer at this point. He has an audience to entertain and he does an amazing job of keeping their attention with just talk. I would hate to think that we've reached a point in this country when expressing your views, however unpopular, would mean that you no longer have the right to take part in a free market enterprise. I probably haven't agreed with anything I've heard Rush say for the past 20 years, but if he wants to own an NFL team, a NBA team, a MLB team or an NHL team, I say more power to him.

I think we on the left should be branded hypocrites if we said nothing on this matter. I don't like what Rush has to say, but damn it, he has every right to say it. Let's not start handing out scarlet letters to people we don't agree with. What should we deny Rush next? The right to buy a car dealership? The right to buy his groceries at Wal-Mart? And why should we just stop at Rush? Perhaps everyone on Fox News should have the same restrictions placed on them. I know Rush is a pretty vile person. I personally can't stand the guy, but I'm not willing to say what he should and shouldn't be able to do with his money.

I know this will probably be a pretty unpopular post, but I'm standing on principle here. Rush should be able to buy a football team if he wants one. Of course the players can refuse to play for him if they want to. The fans can refuse to show up to the games if they want to and the networks can refuse to cover the games if they want to.

It's a Snowe Day in D. C.

So the Finance Committee finally got a version of the health care bill approved. Well, hoo f'ing ray! We, meaning the American people, will now have the pleasure of having our the future of our health care system decided by one person. No, I'm not talking about the person the majority of Americans voted for last November. I'm talking about our new de facto President, Olympia Snowe. I do appreciate Senator Snowe breaking with her party and voting for some version of health care reform. What I do not appreciate is the fact that the bill coming out of the insurance company employee Max Baucus' committee, is without a doubt the weakest of the five bills in Congress.

It has become clear that because of the Snowe endorsement, the weakest of the bills is now the template for any agreement going forward. The Bacus bill is the only one of the five that does not include a public option. The Democrats, who in theory have enough votes to overcome a filibuster, will now bend over backwards to accommodate Senator Snowe. She will be a part of the group that works on merging the two Senate bills and at this point it looks like she will be the most important part. Do you think that a bill containing a public option will make it to the floor of the Senate when keeping the approval of Senator Snowe seems more important to the Democratic leadership than passing an effective bill?

I have no idea how we have come to this point. The last time I checked, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. It seems almost unbelievable to me that the White House would be willing to throw the public option overboard (with no real alternative in sight) for this token appearance of bi-partisanship. Has bi-partisanship somehow replaced effectiveness as the key word for health care reform legislation? In the coming weeks, we will watch as Bacus and Harry Reid bend over backwards in order to placate Senator Snowe. No public option? Sure, Olympia, whatever you want. You want a much larger penalty on those who are too poor to actually afford the high priced insurance that they are now mandated to purchase? Sure. Anything you want. You want to actually make the Bush tax cuts permanent? Sure. We don't need the money anyway.

There can be only one President at a time, according to our Constitution. But I'm not sure that we don't now have two people who now have the power to veto a bill. Senator Snowe may indeed have more power than the guy in the White House, because she gets to veto the bill before it ever gets to his desk.

"Why Doesn't Obama Care

about Fox ‘News’ Channel?" isn't even a question worthy of prolonged discussion, at least not by anyone willing to talk straight about the matter. As I've written here, in post after post after post after post, Fox “News” Channel isn't a news channel, it’s the propaganda arm of the RNC.

Fox “News” is just not news. It’s dishonest for people like Brit Hume and Chris Wallace* (I incorrectly referred to Mike Wallace in the last version of this post), who have actually worked for real news organizations in the past to pretend that it is, or excuse themselves and their bizarre partisan omissions and distortions as an alternative (to what? the facts?)

Every time anyone in elected office appears on Fox “News,” it’s just another layer in the veneer of a false legitimacy for this 24-hour establishment-touting charade that Rupert Murdoch has foisted on the American Public. I’m glad the White House isn’t willing to pretend along with the GOP anymore.

There are no potential Obama supporters or voters within the Fox “News” audience unless they are capable of not watching Fox “News” as though it were information and concede that it is a PR outlet for the Right Wing.
Why do I say that?
Because Fox “News” is the channel Americans turn to when they don’t accept what they see happening in reality. Fox “News” is the place where viewers can go to see Republican politicians and their policies always portrayed in a positive light, unless they don’t tow the party line, and Democrats and Liberals always portrayed as evil and “Unpatriotic.”

Barack Obama mostly ignored Fox “News” Channel during the Presidential campaign to no ill effect. Going on Fox, with the noted exception of Sheppard’s Smith show (Smith’s but a drop in its 24-hour cycle) makes about as much sense as phoning into Rush Limbaugh’s show.

“Recognizing Fox as an enemy worth fighting is an admission of weakness for a president whose appeal has been partly predicated on the promise of unity," Chris Rovzar wrote on yesterday’s New York Magazine Blog.
I couldn’t disagree more.
What Anita Dunn and the White House are doing is not recognizing Fox “News” Channel. It’s not news, so the White House won’t deal with it anymore than they would “World Weekly News.”

You can watch “Fox News,” and enjoy it, even repeat what you hear on it, -but by their own admission, their star “analysts,” Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck are not journalists. They need to go one step further and take the word “News” out of their name. If we had an FCC actually concerned with something other than cursing and the occasional wayward tit on TV, Rupert Murdoch’s product wouldn’t be allowed to be so inaccurately promoted and marketed with such a misleading name.

Fox “News” Channel is not a news network.
That’s why the President doesn’t care.

-SJ

All Aboard

As the Democrats struggle with health care reform, I think it's a good time to remind ourselves why they seem to struggle to get meaningful legislation passed, even with control of the Congress and the White House. When the Republicans are in power, they band together to form a single voice. There are few dissenters and they push through their agenda with seemingly little debate from inside the party. The Democrats, however, end up looking like a model for the modern dysfunctional family. Are the Republicans more united than the Democrats? No doubt. Are the Republicans more effective at advancing their views? No doubt.

Why are the Republicans more effective than the Democrats? It's simple really. The Democrats try to incorporate many views under their banner, while the Republicans are basically tolerant of only one. Being a "conservative" means that you believe in God and the Bible. That you believe in a strong national defense above all else. That you believe in the 2nd amendment as an absolute. That you believe abortion is a sin. That you believe illegal immigrants (and frankly all immigrants of color) are the cause of many of the ills of society. That you believe that government has no place in your health care (as long as Medicare and VA benefits are tended to by some invisible force that is definitely not the government). These along with a few others are the tenants of the Republican cause. You either believe these things or you have no place in the party. When Colin Powell dared to admit that he was voting for Barack Obama, the right wing press attacked. Rush Limbaugh said that the only reason he was voting that way was because of skin color. Rush said that there was no place in the Republican Party for him.

That is the modern Republican Party. It is monolithic and at times monosyllabic. The Democrats are a "big tent" party. It is made up of a diverse coalition of views and beliefs. Some believe in God and the Bible, some believe that abortion is a sin, some have no love for immigrants and some even believe that government should have no place in their health care. The difference being that the Democrats do not try to expel people for those views or beliefs. The current uproar over the "Blue Dog" Democrats would have you believe differently, but unless one of those representatives were to declare himself or herself a Republican, they will still receive the majority of support of their party members against any opposition.

It does make the Democratic Party a whole lot messier and seemingly less effective, but you have to remember the legacy that the big party approach has left behind. From social security, to desegregation of the military, to the civil rights bill, to Medicare, the Democratic Party has been the driving force behind each of these landmark changes to our country. It was a struggle each time to get these things done. Arms had to be twisted, promises had to made and sometimes the rules had to be bent just a little in order to give the American people real change. But always remember which side of the aisle those changes came from.

I am a declared Independent who has been at times very frustrated with the pace of progress in Washington, D. C. At times I've thrown up my hands at the President's seeming lack of urgency. I've cursed the Blue Dogs and the Progressives. I've sworn off writing on this blog a time or two. I've written angry articles, I've called my Senators and Congressmen and demanded action. I have even said out loud that I wished the Democrats could be a little more like the Republicans. But with a calmer head I do realize that wishing for such a thing is more than foolhardy. It would be downright dangerous. Imagine a Congress in which we only had far right and far left fighting each other. We would see and endless string of leadership trying to dismantle what the other party did while in power. I long for the day when the Republican leadership will realize that a narrow vision is not necessarily a better vision. Until that day, we have the Democratic Party, warts and all, that still invites disparate views to share the stage.

I want meaningful health care reform. I want an end to the war in Afghanistan. I want public education to be a priority for this country again. I want an end to the abuse of the Constitution. I want a lot of things, but as I make my endless demands, I do occasionally stop and realize that there is only one party that's listening. It may not be perfect, it may not be the most effective, but it is the only one that genuinely values ideas that may not fit exactly into its platform. So I take today to celebrate the Democratic Party. Tomorrow may be a different story though.

We’ll Never Know; Just How Much We’ll Never Know

Last year, I wrote a three part post focused on the significance of an October 23, 2001 Justice Department legal memo. It was a legal opinion penned by John C. Yoo in response to the Bush Administration’s need for clarification on just what they could and couldn’t do in the days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

What John C. Yoo did, in a duplicitous violation of every Conservative ethic and philosophical tenet that George W. Bush and his cadre claimed to believe in, -was not address the Constitution as it was, but as the Bush Administration would have liked it to be. Yoo made rationalizations for circumventing Constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure and later attempted to define torture so narrowly that Rom Saxon’s Fu Manchu might well have found himself within legal limits in any of his gory exploitation movies.

We’ll never know; just how much we’ll never know, about the Bush administration’s backroom, nighttime attack on our Republic because too many of us were reduced to unquestioning, gullible, submissive fools in fear of what else some religious fundamentalist billionaire hiding in caves would do to us after the towers fell and 2,740 people were murdered. We Americans, driven by a paralyzing fear of the unknown, looked to the incompetent dysfunctional leaders in the White House who let us down in the first place.

How a President who was on vacation for nearly a month prior to the attack on the World Trade Center inspired blind loyalty that bordered on worship by American citizens is something that will never be understood or explained fully by anyone. Just as baffling was the climate we endured; in which no person could raise any questions about the obvious incompetence of the Bush Administration despite their increasingly ridiculous track rack record. We spent eight years hoping for the best and enduring the worst.

Now there is more evidence coming in the declassified words of our former Vice President himself.

Yesterday Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court ruled that the FBI must reveal “much” of its notes the 2004 voluntary interview with Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity; -that small criminal matter concerning Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, a CIA agent who became a target of the Bush administration because Wilson wouldn’t stop pointing out that Cheney, Rumsfeld and others were lying about intelligence concerning Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. “Much” is what they are offering Americans in the place of the whole truth, instead of the facts in the matter.

We’ll never know; just how much we’ll never know about what the Bush White House did under the cover and privilege of national security and the pretense of defending the nation. The Obama Administration refuses to let the Justice Department do its job, -if it will lead to scandal… but all crime is scandal my friends, and so certain avenues to the facts and the truth will remain closed to us until they become inconsequential. Too many of us are relieved at this. Too many Americans are content to not know the extent, the horror of the Bush Administration’s abuses fearing that a condemnation of them is an indictment on all of us… The roads to sober, honest redemption are often paved with regrets and the broken glass of our fragile ideals.

We’ll just have to be tougher than that.

We must never be afraid of the facts, because when we are, opportunists are free to bend reality and recreate the world according to their own self-interests. Preferring to argue about imaginary Communists in our midst, instead of the power hungry elites who operate beyond reaches of the laws we insist protect and bind us as a country. We become fodder for them all, big and small when we fear what they tell us to fear, and see only what they tell us to see.

So I’ll leave you this Friday afternoon with the poignant words of a man who I trust is keeping company with Blake, Whitman, Poe, Yeats, Keats, Tennyson, Twain and Jimi Hendrix.

In 1993, Bill Hicks said to us:

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly colored and it’s very loud and it’s very fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, -or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, “Hey – don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.”

And we… kill those people!

“Shut him up.”

“We have a lot invested in this ride.
Shut him up.
Look at my furrows of worry.
Look at my big bank account and my family.
This just has to be real.”

It’s just a ride.

But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, did you ever notice that? -And let the demons run amok. But it doesn’t matter because: It’s just a ride.

And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice.
No effort,
-no work,
-no job,
-no savings and money.
A choice, right now, between fear and love.

The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.

Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride: Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world,
--which it would many times over, -not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”

***

Have a great weekend. Remember to speak the truth if you know it and are able. Silence is not honesty my friends. Sometimes it's downright suicidal.

-SJ

Welcome to Lowball

The truth plain and simple is not something that is in doubt. You can argue the facts of any situation, but the truth is not open to debate. Why then do the major cable news network spend so much time arguing about the truth. There are no death panels in the health care legislation. That is the truth. How many times have we heard "debates" over the past couple of months about this very thing? President Obama was born in the United States. That is the fact and yet lunatics, including members of Congress, get to go on TV and argue this very point on a regular basis.

Do you know what wasn't the truth? Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and yet there was very little debate about that point when the President said it, even though it was later proved to be absolutely false. Are we now seeing a backlash from the press against its negligence to question what was coming out of the White House during the Bush administration? Is the press trying to make up for being asleep at the wheel?

Roman Polanski plead guilty to a charge of having sex with a minor which was the least serious of the six initial charges that arose from his drugging and then raping a thirteen year old girl (consensual or not, having sex with a drugged and drunk 13 year old is rape by definition). He served 45 days under psychiatric observation and then was to return to court for additional sentencing as deemed necessary by the court. Apparently under his plea deal, he was not supposed to serve any additional time. The Judge in the case, who undoubtedly committed some major misconduct decided that he didn't want to go by the agreed upon plea deal and so Roman Polanski fled the country after being released from psychiatric observation, but before appearing before the court again. He is therefore a fugitive from justice. That is the truth. He is a convicted felon who decided to flea the country when faced with more possible jail time. Yet the networks have committed air time to having people try and debate this issue. There is no issue. He pleaded guilty to a crime and then ran away before facing sentencing. Period. It does not matter that the now adult woman (who received a very handsome settlement from Polanski) wants the case dropped. It does not matter that those in Hollywood decided to give him an Academy Award for his direction of the movie "The Pianist". It does not matter that he made "Chinatown". It does not matter. The truth is that he is a fugitive from justice. Period. There is no debate about that, so why would you put two people on a major news network to debate the point.

When the news networks give equal weight to both the truth and whatever made up nonsense can be spewed against the truth, they play a major role in undermining that truth. When they make fun of the crackpots (like the insane woman who keeps on coming up with Kenyan birth certificates for Obama), they legitimize them by giving them air time and allowing their message to be heard by millions of others. It would be the same as if Chris Matthews were to allow a serious debate to take place between the people who believe the earth is flat and those who know that it is round. The argument is ridiculous on its face, but by giving them equal time you legitimize the ridiculous.

It is unfortunate indeed that the news organizations didn't do a better job of questioning the Bush administration when they had a chance, but to turn that mistake into a free for all maybe even more damaging to the American public. Isn't there someone in the morning production meetings of those major cable news networks who will stand up for the truth? I understand that the 24 hour news cycle forces each network to search for stories to cover, but there are so many worthy stories. The networks are not only guilty of laziness, they are guilty of trying to appeal tot he lowest common denominator. How many follow up stories have been done about the murders that took place during Hurricane Katrina that went unpunished. How many stories have been done about the fact that our public education system is falling apart? How many stories have been done about the fact that our Constitutional rights are under constant attack? I don't have any specific numbers but the answer is too damn few!

There are a hundred legitimate topics that the news organizations can point their cameras at and yet they chose to show us debates about the truth and present that as real news. When will this stop? When will our news organizations once again try to give us the news as news and not as entertainment. There are lots of network shows that I can watch or hell I can even rent a movie if I want to watch something for the sake of entertainment. I watch news networks because I want the news, not so that it can compete with the latest blockbuster from Steven Spielberg. Let's focus here people. The times demand more than we are being given. The stakes are too high for our only real inside view of the politicians, that are going to decide the fate of this country, to be looked upon as just another chance to entertain the lowest common denominator.

No Country for Old Men, Women and Children

I wrote at length last year about certain corners I thought our Republic had turned. I was contemplating what appeared to be a new national maturity. I naively exhaled after that last presidential election in November, thinking to myself that certain established conventions used to deceive and manipulate our nation into voting against its own interests were finally dismantled or at least exhausted for the time being.

I didn’t count on just how much money the Healthcare industry has to spend, and how much power and influence it has already bought over the long years since President Nixon set the HMOs loose on us like a pack of rabid dogs.

Maybe attacking Healthcare Reform now, and at any of the times since President Truman’s efforts, was a case of putting the cart before the horse; because without getting the lobbyists away from all of our representatives, without campaign reform that actually keeps corporations from buying our House and Senate out from under our tired feet, it doesn’t matter what we need or how badly we need it. With enough money, "we the people" can be made to believe we don’t need anything, and we can be made to fear and refuse the very things that will save our lives. After all, Healthcare is a matter of life and death for millions of Americans, and yet some people are arguing about it today it as if “coverage” were fancy clothing, or an extended awning to be put off in favor of remaining indoors and saving money.

Everyone in America needs to remember that the Republican Party and its members asked no questions about budgets, deficits and the burden we were passing onto our children when President Reagan tripled the deficit, and the GOP again remained conspicuously silent when George W, Bush doubled it again while increasing government bureaucracy to an unprecedented degree.

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox “News” Channel consistently focuses on “character” issues (-real or contrived,) points out hypocrisies and celebrates the moral lapses (-legitimate or spurious) of any Democrat. So why haven’t they pointed out that Max Baucus, the Democratic Senator from Montana received $3,973,485 from the Healthcare industry from 2003 to 2008? In fact it surprised me to know, the only senators who have received more campaign contributions from the Healthcare industry during the same time period were the three major Presidential contenders of 2008: Hillary Clinton; John McCain; and Barack Obama. That’s how much money Baucus is in the barrel for. Think about it: the only people who took more money from the Healthcare companies were people running for President… and one of them won.

That’s how much money one Senator is worth to the Healthcare industry.

According to The Center for Responsive Politics, Senator Baucus has received $852,813 from the Pharmaceutical companies and drug makers, $851,142 from doctors and health professionals, $784,184 from the health insurers and $465,750 from HMOs.

Now, my collaborator on this blog and I have repeatedly pointed out the many reasons why Fox “News” Channel isn’t news: but for once, just once, I should’ve been able to count on Fox “News” Channel, -that dogged bastion of partisanship- to go after a Democrat…
Didn’t I tell you I was naïve?

America’s health has no price my friend.

If President George W. Bush could say to Americans that our lives were worth whatever we could go into debt for, why can’t President Barack H. Obama say the same thing?
Is war really that much more easily justifiable than medical coverage?

You reading this, if you are sick, there is no price we should not pay to keep you, a member of our society, from pain and untimely death. There is no America without Americans, and we’d do well to remind each other and every politician that we’ve elected and that we’ve paid to represent us that we are the country, we are its spirit, its mind, its power and its naked soul.

There is no refuge from this problem:

We can reform Healthcare in such a way that it is no longer an industry that preys on us; destroys our businesses big and small; denies help to the dying –or- we can put it off once again, and in twelve-years time be forced to nationalize it completely in a panic, thereby actually bringing about the bureaucratic nightmares, draconian rationing and inefficiencies many disingenuously claim are common in the United Kingdom, Canada and all those other nations with curiously higher life expectancies than our own.

Maybe we’ll just sail to Byzantium my friends, or better yet, to some other imagined shore where life has no price, variable or set, and the truth is not what somebody says it is, -but a thing we know and use against the people and things that would harm us.

-SJ

Susan Atkins Died Peacefully Yesterday, -Unlike Her Victims in 1969

The phrase “rot in jail” has lost all meaning, and with it the authority of much of our laws in the United States and around the world.

Sharon Tate’s son would have turned 40 this year. He would have been a contemporary of mine. He would have graduated from High school in 1987, maybe gotten out of college in 1991. He will forever remain an unnamed (correction: See Flora's comment below,) untried theoretical being -because through no fault of his own, he was struck from the world less than a month before being born by a lunatic named Charles Manson and his weak-minded followers. His mother died a gruesome torturous death at the hands of people who have cowardly begged for clemency and mercy for decades in front of juries. Susan Atkins even married twice while in prison. All of this makes me extremely angry.

I suppose I take issue with the notion of redemption as a tangible functioning concept. What could anybody ever do to compensate for a murder?

There are no dollar amounts imaginable, no assignment of human service that can approach the suffering of family and friends. Nothing can bring back the murdered. Nothing can erase the pain and violence of their end.

What punishment or prison can make things “even?”

After all the promises of justice; often portrayed in marble as a blind-folded robed woman, scales in hand, what is there? It’s a fiction.
Nothing can ever balance her scales; nothing can ever truly set things right against the finality of an untimely death at the hands of a criminal. Killing the Manson family members a thousand times over, would not bring back one single human being. There is only the dry solace of knowing that murderers like Susan Atkins will never be free to take another life, never be free to unleash their homicidal idiocy on the defenseless. There is only the small consolation that Patricia Krenwinkel; Leslie Van Houten; and Charles Watson will spend the rest of their lives surrounded by dangerous individuals like their own worthless selves, who share their same shameful disregard for human beings.

Atkins lived to be 61. She had been suffering from brain cancer, she’d had a leg amputated and was partially paralyzed in her last months of life. According to the New York Times, Vincent Bugliosi, (Susan Atkins' prosecutor in the 1970 trials) recently spoke out in favor of her release, saying the mercy requested was ''minuscule'' because Atkins was on her deathbed.

-This woman was sentenced to life in prison.
What mercy, -minuscule or otherwise- should come in to play?

During the 10-month trial in 1970, Atkins, Charles Manson and their co-defendants lied and aggressively maintained their innocence. Once they were convicted however, Atkins confessed her violent homicides in graphic detail without visible remorse.
They killed 9 in all that we know of: Sharon Tate 81/2 months pregnant, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Voityck Frykowski and Steven Parent and grocery owners Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Subsequently Atkins also was convicted of another murder. She and Charles Manson killed Gary Hinman, in July of 1969.

I’m not in support of the death penalty because I’m against killing people like Susan Atkins: I’m against the death penalty because our justice system is run by human beings and is susceptible to all the errors and abuse that ordinary people bring to doing a job. I just don’t trust anybody with a decision so permanent. However, in cases like these, where life sentences are administered, why at the end of a convicted prisoner’s life is it even conceivable that they be afforded parole?

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, was convicted for his involvement in the Lockerbie bombing that killed 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 unsuspecting Scottish citizens on the ground who had the terrible misfortune of being hit with debris from the airplane. Al Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment but served just over 8½ years of his sentence in Greenock Prison. Just over a month ago, the Scottish Government released him on “compassionate grounds,” because he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer, with a diagnosed life expectancy of 3 months.
Al Megrahi returned to Libya.
His victims are still in the ground; their own lives violently interrupted and unfinished. Al Megrahi will get to say good bye to his relatives, and ponder his life and existence, something he didn’t give his victims a chance to do.

As for Susan Atkins, she said she had found redemption in Christianity in the later years of her life. Trouble is, I just don’t believe in that kind of absolution. It’s entirely unacceptable, and yet another reason why we have to insure religion stays out of government. If Atkins had said she deserved mercy because she’d now had a new found belief in Superman and this ethics, she would have been laughed at. Because she cited an established religion, her request was actually deliberated and considered.

I don’t think Atkins saying she’s sorry and that she’d changed, or found God should’ve unlocked the doors to the prison she murdered her way into. I’m glad the authorities and the parole board in California agree. Susan Atkins received a life sentence. Being that life sentences are the least we can do (-keeping them away from the rest of us so they can’t hurt anybody again) to the monsters amongst us like Al Megrahi who think it’s rational and just to murder people in order to make a political point, these sentences should be honored to the letter.

I think the entire idea of parole for murderers, on the face of it, is utter nonsense. Parole essentially undoes the functions of the laws that we agree to obey and uphold and makes their consequences ultimately non-existent.

The act of even weighing parole for a murderer or rapist, gives consideration to a human being convicted of the most violent crimes imaginable, but it also affords a right to that offender, a right he or she took away from their victims.

We’re an odd country at times. Our inability to reach consensus on just exactly what is fair and just punishment reflects our diversity of thought and ethics, but I believe that laws, if they are to be laws at all, have to be enforced, or legislated into disuse if deemed ineffective or incorrect. We have had a bizarre trend over the last forty years of new laws passed simply because existing laws are not enforced. The body of Hate crimes legislation, which I largely support, is a sad indication of this. Hate crimes laws have largely come about because the existing laws to safeguard all citizens from violent battery and attack simply aren’t enforced when it comes to certain minorities and gender groups. While I support Hate crimes legislation as a necessary stop gap, ultimately we have to return to the concrete idea of one set of laws and consequences for all.
We have to insist upon immutable rules, consequences and regulations for living where violence is concerned so that we avoid the insulting charade of multiple-murderers like Susan Atkins, David Berkowitz and countless others attempting to play on the sympathies of a parole board for clemency.


In their actions as executioners of human beings, they gave no such consideration to their victims.

-SJ

Right Wing 1, ACORN 0

The House voted yesterday to deny any further federal money to the nationwide community organizing group ACORN. Since 1994, the group has received approximately $53 million in federal support.

Fox “News” Commentator Glenn Beck, (who repeatedly claims to be an independent but only takes up Conservative causes that benefit the wealthy, the Republican Party and the Right) has been on a targeted witch hunt against the organization this year, accusing ACORN of voter-registration fraud among other things. Recently ACORN office workers were videotaped consulting and advising Conservative activists who were “undercover” posing as street hustlers interested in establishing a prostitution ring. Officials at ACORN have called the incidents uncovered in the sting “isolated” and have begun their own internal investigations, maintaining that workers at other ACORN offices immediately reported the Conservative imposters to the local police. Time will tell whether ACORN’s explanations are valid or whether it is a systematically “corrupt” organization as many on the Right are rushing to allege.

I can tell you what I know of ACORN from my own personal experience. In my native South Bronx, ACORN workers did and continue to do extremely important community outreach, passing out flyers notifying people of upcoming election times, from the all important local primaries (I just missed the Democratic primary here in New York City, so shame on me) to the national elections. I first registered to vote because of ACORN outreach and I don’t think I’ve missed a local or national election since. ACORN’s outreach efforts serve the poorest communities and the most impoverished Americans across the nation with information about their rights and responsibilities as voters. You will not find them canvassing in the Hamptons, Beverly Hills, Westchester, Aspen Hills or Hilton Head. It’s pretty much a given-truth if not a discernable fact that ACORN’s efforts do not aid the GOP, which has been consistently hurt when the poorest in America step up to vote en masse. It’s important to point out that this is not ACORN’s fault. If the GOP represented the working poor in this country and proposed any policies that weren’t “tax breaks for the Rich in disguise,” they might get the millions of Poor and lower working classes to vote for their candidates across the nation on occasion. Instead, the GOP will have to rely on those particular lower class White and Hispanic voters who they can scare easily.

In the end, most of ACORN’s operating revenue comes from members and other supporters, so these efforts will not dismantle the organization outright. Yesterday’s House financing ban, which may be Unconstitutional, is crow-barred into an education bill that has to pass the Senate. I'm not counting on an eventual veto by our President, as neither he, nor anyone else seems to have the guts to stand by this organization that has done so much for so many for so long.

All I can say is, game on.

If an entire nationwide not for profit’s funding can be taken down by the alleged criminal negligence of employees in the field or in one office thanks to Glenn Beck and Rupert Murdoch’s Right Wing Media apparatus, then we should all prepare ourselves for more of the same.

Let's see More “investigative activism” by everyone.
Let's do it America. They say "the truth never hurt anyone," but I say the facts are downright poisonous to liars.

I am going to check out ACORN’s local offices here in New York and see about making a contribution and thanking them for reaching out to me when I was in college. I should note that, once registered, I in fact voted for a Republican; George Bush in 1988.

So much for ACORN’s intrinsic leftist agenda and voter fraud.

As of this writing 62 companies have pulled support from Glenn Beck’s show.

Game on.

-SJ

The One Reason the Recession Is Not Over…

Joblessness.

A year ago we wrote plenty about the collapse of the Investment Bank economy on Wall Street due to years of frontier-style deregulation. Lehman Brothers imploded exactly a year ago this week. Now, today, --Ben Bernanke, says the recession is “probably over.” Well, I think our Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is “probably out of touch.” He said this recession is over, while fully acknowledging that the almost 15 million unemployed Americans will remain jobless as the nation “recovers.”

I don’t think that Ben Bernanke and I have the same definition of “recovery” in mind. I’m not even sure if he’s from the same planet as myself and every other person doing the living and dying on earth. If you’re reading this and you’re out of work, what in hell does “probably over” mean to you? For that matter what does a “recession” or “recovery” mean to you?

If you don’t have a job, no amount of macroeconomic rationalization will help you. In fact the easing of credit and flow of goods is just a slap in your face, because you can’t pay for any of it.

Aside from the obvious intrinsic ties to that entire “supply and demand” concept that is practically religion here and in the United Kingdom (or for that matter its cynical, Randian cousin “supply-side economics”), there are a host of reasons why we need all people at work in America and throughout the world (read consumers) who can actually pay for things. The most important among these reasons is the consumers themselves, because they and the citizenry they benefit with their work and taxes are one in the same. When people are out of work it doesn’t just mean boom times for Campbell Soup Co. and bad times for Ruth Chris. It means the fabric of society is coming undone. Every fraction of a percentage point up in Unemployment is another tear. We’d do well to remember Flint Michigan in the 1980s, and remember New York City in the 1970s. We must remember that every riot we have ever had in this country had an ultimate, underlying economic cause. Violent crime will inevitably rise with unemployment, igniting a holocaust in regions where unemployment soars above the national averages.

But Ben Bernanke says the economy “likely is growing now,” warning that “growth” won't be sufficient to stave off the unemployment rate from rising from its (as of this writing) 9.7 rate; nearly double what is considered “normal.”

“Normal” is a word that should be legislated into disuse. No term with such built-in relativity can be harmless.

The consequences of crime, deregulation and greed “from above” are now wrecking lives anew “down below.” The cycle will “likely continue” in my estimation as the usurious credit card debt that is crippling the nation’s consumers, out of work or not, finally brings the remaining transnational banks to a reckoning not imagined since the evaporation of Bear Stearns.

The question remains, who will be the next parade of “experts,” officials, financiers, bankers and regulators who will claim not to have seen the next collapse ahead of time? Who will be the new fools charged with telling the world they did not know that joblessness would wreck every remaining institution in the now Global economy?

What fool believes this recession is over?

-SJ

The FCC, a Worthless Commission Not Deserving of My Tax Dollars

A few posts ago, I wrote that I would leave the Republicans alone, while I attempted to focus on what appeared to be a faltering resolve on the part of Democrats who were swept in by American exhaustion and frustration with Conservative economic and foreign policy in the last election cycles. I reasoned, incorrectly, that ignoring the GOP’s childish attempts at disinformation and obstruction and instead focusing on the actual policies and bills under proposal and supporting real change was the best course of action.

I reckoned, incorrectly, that taking the high road was the only option.

I was naïve, and I was a fool. Our President and his administration, (especially Rahm Emmanuel) have also been naïve and foolish to sit and trust that the truth and the facts of any matter will ever get out in our country.

How can anyone in this nation expect their owns words to “speak for themselves” when there are demagogues and gang leaders, (Yes, in my opinion, I consider people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to be no different than gang leaders) not reporting, but lying about what has been said?

Lying.

Not opining, not editorializing, not commenting, but actually lying and saying that things were said that were not said by anyone.

Most Americans shrug, thinking there is nothing that can be done when people on TV or the web lie.

My solution, and I hope you’ll help me fight for it is simple: America has to force the FCC do it’s job.

Whenever a news outlet, “News” Channel, Newspaper, Magazine, Radio show, News website, blog or other media vehicle pronounces a lie, misstates a fact, they must be fined 30% percent of the ad revenue generated and 30% of subscription revenue generated unless they give equal time and space to correcting said lie, or misstatement. Blogs and other websites get a three strikes rule, 3 lies and they’re out-unless they give equal space to the facts as they are. Period.

This is not an attack on the freedom of speech, because the freedom of speech is not a right to lie. Lying is not self-expression. Lying is an assault on reality, and when it happens in the news? It’s a threat to national security and our society at large.

The First Amendment does not protect Sean Hannity’s lying about the President. When Sean Hannity purposefully (or due to his theoretical and likely calculated ineptitude) gets the facts wrong and insists on TV that the President "said tonight that insurance executives are bad people" in referring to the Presidential Capitol Hill address of September 9, 2009 there should be immediate consequences.

In fact, our President said “…it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly, by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest, by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage, and by jacking up rates. Insurance executives don't do this because they're bad people; they do it because it's profitable.”
Here’s Sean Hannity’s lie about what the President said, so you don’t have to take my word for it:



This repeated, daily lying by the Right wing media apparatus can only be remedied by exact instances in allotted space and time of the facts being spoken as they are. The FCC, if it was worth anything at all as a regulating body, would force Sean Hannity to correct this lie immediately.

But it won’t unless we make them do it. The FCC won’t do a thing unless Americans show them that we care more about “News” channels lying to us than we do about Janet Jackson’s nipple, or someone cursing at the Grammy’s.

I am asking you the reader, for the first and only time, that you please forward a link to this post, or better yet, write to the FCC at the link below and tell them what you know and how you feel:

Simply click here

Glenn Beck’s right. We need to take our country back, --from Rupert Murdoch.

-SJ

Oh, There’s Still Plenty of Time for Games Mr. President…

Especially when the opposition to your proposed Health Care reforms and overhaul is the same party that tried to get the last Democrat holding your office impeached over a blow job or some such nonsense a little over ten years ago. Don’t be naive Mr. President, even a pointless argument can run down the clock, particularly when your opponents are behaving like a throng of morons because they’ve exhausted all pretense of cogent disagreement.

Yes my friends, last night was a doozy of an oratorio from the President of the United States. It is mind-blowing when we soberly consider what we had to put up with in the way of a Commander-in-Chief for eight long years. Strange how although George W. Bush was repeatedly caught in obvious lies, especially concerning the run up to the war in Iraq, nobody ever called him a liar to his face, no one ever shouted it out during a press conference, and it was certainly never yelled out from a crowd while he was making a speech on Capitol hill, -if we can call the sad bumbling mutterances of George W. Bush speech making at all. Anybody shouting anything at George W. Bush would have been promptly bum rushed and hand cuffed, despite the fact that it would not have been a false accusation to call the man a liar.

-Don’t tase me bro, indeed.

Representative Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina decided he not only disagreed with the President, but that last night was all about him and his theatrical self-righteous anger. In shouting "You lie!" all Mr. Wilson did was accuse President Obama of doing what he and his party is actually doing. Mr. Wilson has lied repeatedly, promoting phantom items in the Health Care bills that simply do not exist: coverage for illegal immigrants, death panels, et cetera, et cetera.

Our President may not have any more time for games, but the Republicans have all the time in the world for games, for nonsense, and for obstruction. It’s the only way to protect the status quo they love so dearly and profit from so greatly. The Republicans want to protect Health Care Insurance companies from the people of the United States.

Simply put: The GOP’s goal is to protect the Health Care industry's profits.

Does anyone need to be convinced that the GOP is not going to support reform in any way? Does anyone need to look at history again to see how consistently Conservatives and free markets proponents always fight progress and stone wall anything that helps individual Americans as a population? If you do, read Jack Jodell’s recent excellent post for a mind-bending refresher.

The GOP is at it again, but this time suggesting:
“On that goal (-lowering the cost of health care), Republicans are ready, and we've been ready to work with the president for common-sense reforms that our nation can afford.” in the words of Representative Charles Boustany of Louisiana’s 7th District in response to the President’s address last night.

This is bullshit of the worst kind.

Republicans had controlling majorities of the House and the Senate for much of the 1990s, and they did not bring up the subject of healthcare, -in fact, they fought it tooth, nail and hoof when President Clinton proposed it, successfully delaying and burying it, until now.

The GOP only seems to care about costs when a government program is not lining the pockets of their corporate supporters. Republicans only care about costs when a program or law might compete with that profit hungry base of theirs represented by industrial lobbyists.

Remember the “no bid” contracts awarded to Dick Cheney’s friends for the War in Iraq? We’re running up that particular tab every single day, month, and year. I don’t hear one Republican calling that out as a concern. The “no bid” contracts were not bad business or acts of fiscal irresponsibility; they were crimes of theft. Instead, Joe Wilson of South Carolina and his cabal of whores in the Congress are mobilizing to fight against insuring 50 million Americans because of what it might cost.

The GOP will continue to use double talk and lies to protect their beloved Health Care industry. You heard it yourself last night, you saw it on the faces of all those Congressmen, some sitting with hastily scrawled paper signs, ready to protest the very idea of medical coverage for all Americans… -other than themselves that is. These games the Republican Party plays with American lives will not end, not abroad on the streets of Kabul, not in downtown in Peoria, and not outside my window here in New York City.

-SJ

The Tyranny of Bigots

In the early months of this year, many Americans wondered what President Obama’s elected term in office meant, and would mean to ourselves and our future generations. For all that I’ve written on this blog, I have to ultimately confess I still don’t really know. After all, even the Roman Empire had a few “Black” emperors (actually about 10) like Septimus Severus, yet the African presence and that of people of Color have been effectively erased from Roman history by the post Columbian culture of our modern world and its institutional historians. After all that my collaborator and I have written about the last election and its significance, the truth of our country and our culture remain difficult to assess or know in light of the current petulant turmoil masquerading as a manifestation of the vox populi.

How does a country that elected a descendant of its former slave class Commander in Chief and President reconcile the juvenile shouting and bluster across town halls, and in so-called “protests” across the Midwest and South?

Currently, (among a slew of recent indignities weathered with unprecedented grace,) our President now has to explain, excuse and submit for review a direct address to the nation’s schoolchildren. Never before has any President had to file an advance copy of an address with the schoolteachers, principals and parents of the United States for vetting and approval. Since when do the children of America have to be protected from the President? We know the answer don’t we?

It’s not everyone in America who wants to use supposed ideological differences as an excuse to invalidate a President because he happens to be Black.
It’s not everyone in our nation who wants to use prevailing racial prejudice to strike a symbolic blow across partisan lines.…But once again, the “loudest voices in the room” are focusing, and at times even determining the subject of national debate.

It’s time we all remembered that bigots will always be the “loudest voices in the room.” Scared people can always shout longer than those who aren’t afraid, or those who want questions answered. It’s time we fully acknowledged what the “loudest voices in the room” are actually afraid of. Our news media isn’t up to telling us the truth anymore. They’re too scared of being called “biased” or “Liberals” by Fox “News” channel’s McCarthyite media apparatus.

Pundits and fake journalists like Sean Hannity who promote this kind of mob stupidity are just as responsible as the real journalists who report these latest attempts to invalidate the President as if they were legitimate invocations of parental rights or genuine dissent.

To the Right, the Republican Party and its sympathizers, I say again to you:

Your candidate lost.

Grow up.
When George W. Bush took the election in 2000 under inarguably questionable circumstances, not one Democrat in office talked about revolution, secession, or “wanting their country back.” -And maybe the Democrats should have, because the Republican candidate’s brother just happened to be Governor of the state that decided the election,
-but nobody did. Nobody.
So grow up, all of you.

There is no reason, (other than a childish refusal to accept a Black man as President,) for the nonsense going on in America’s schools over the President’s address. Fox “News” channel and its mascot of the moment Glenn Beck won’t call it racism and bigotry cloaked under partisanship because they’d have to concede that they have no point, no reason or basis for their ongoing opposition to every single thing the President does.

They’d have to concede that it is the President himself, down to his last African-American molecule that is so disgusting and unacceptable to them.

Rupert Murdoch’s band of cowards from Sean Hannity, on down to Glenn Beck won’t ever call what they are doing by its actual name, but everyone else should, because that’s all it is.

-SJ

Into the Mystic

Rest in Peace, Teddy. The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

Capitalism as Ethical Compass

While it would be interesting, and frankly just damn funny, to list the (now somewhere around 33) advertisers scrambling to retroactively disassociate themselves from Glenn Beck, the events inspiring his recent temporary “suspension” speak to something larger that is altogether embarrassing about our nation, our culture, and ourselves.

When corporations exhibit a scintilla of integrity or sober judgment, it should shame the rest of our country’s population, who have no overarching profit/loss motives or PR concerns to overcome in making their decisions. When Major League Baseball took it upon itself to racially desegregate, years ahead of the federal government and the society at large, there was no great sigh of resigned embarrassment around the country, but there should have been. When a nation’s political and social advancement is left to professional sports, something is seriously wrong with the country and its people. Today, it is no small thing for any giant corporation like Proctor & Gamble or Wal*Mart to draw a line in the sand and specifically cite something they perceive as reprehensible, risking the potential alienation of a particular demagogue’s audience who are at the end of the day, the very consumers they are trying to advertise to.

Recently I’ve read perspectives on this retreat from Beck’s show by marketers (but not a retreat from Fox News Channel itself) in places ranging from the Myers Report to Advertising Age. Interestingly, there hasn’t been much of an uproar, or even expression of surprise at what the Right is calling “activism” and “coercion,” and what the Left is calling “responsibility.” No one is surprised that Beck’s latest remarks are the straw that broke the camel’s back, and no one ever doubted that the camel’s back was in peril for these many years. Beck appears on a network that allows him to show footage of Nazis as a backdrop while talking about the President of the United States. While Fox “News” insists it is “fair and balanced” and maintains it exists to counter the media’s Liberal bias, it cannot cite examples of CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS or news organizations in any other media that engage in regularly calculated omissions of important events or that issue forth lies on a nearly daily if not hourly basis, -certainly nobody matching its own level of reach and recognition. Fox News is a propaganda media network, and it repeatedly shields itself from recrimination by maintaining that its “analysts” are not journalists, but on-air “commentators” merely expressing opinions. Rupert Murdoch has brusquely constructed his network with programming blocks that offer hyperbole, fiction, paranoia, exaggeration, -in short a network where “feelings” and “suspicions” are always more important than the facts. Murdoch shields the “News” part of his product’s name with a single legitimate news program that sticks to the facts and operates according to the institutionalized practices and standards of journalism in America: the afternoon program hosted by Sheppard Smith may be the only objectively-postured news program Fox features daily. All other slots are filled with, at best, sad parodies of what broadcast journalism is supposed to be, including Geraldo Rivera and Greta Van Susteren’s shows. At worst, you’ll get Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly.

Opinions are protected speech by our Constitution, so Fox “News” manages to cover any of its partisan nonsense, distortion or out-and-out lies by presenting them as opinion. But a lie is not an opinion, and in any case, opinions and beliefs have no place in the reporting of the facts. Journalists are not to report what they believe to be factual, only what they know to be factual… or at least this is what journalists do everywhere else, except on Fox “News.”

You can only know a fact. You cannot know a lie.

A lie can only be believed or disbelieved:
If a person says “2+2=5,” this is not something they know, it is something they believe, or say they believe. In a concrete sense they can only know the fact “2+2=4,” or know nothing at all.

Logic notwithstanding, the idea is that this is somehow all covered by freedom of speech and the freedom of the press is incorrect. The freedom of Speech is not a right to lie, and freedom of the press is not a Constitutional right to disseminate said lie. In an ideal world the Fox “News” Channel’s violations would be subject to all kinds of actions, legal and regulatory. Journalism is in fact subject to regulations and laws, even if you try to sneak by and call journalism “opinion” as Rupert Murdoch has done by creating Fox “News.” In an ideal world, or in a nation that simply operated by the rules it claims are its laws, Fox “News” would suffer fines that would dwarf the nonsense that plagued Howard Stern in 1990s. In an ideal world the FCC would actually do something about Fox “News” and its violations of the Republic’s Fourth Estate.

Instead, it is advertisers at the urging of an online community who have to point out to the rest of us that this is unacceptable, despicable and wrong by pulling their ads off of what they clearly view as the worst show on Fox “News,” in some cases publicly reiterating that they had already requested their ads not be associated with Glenn Beck’s program in the first place.

Why is it that we as a nation have not done the same with our time and attention? Are we waiting for the 3 remaining advertisers to leave his show, or are we just waiting for a slow death from embarrassment and shame? I wonder at the questionable people and things we’ve allowed to take the place of names like Murrow, Cronkite, Brinkley, Brokaw, Jennings, Koppel, Lehrer, Macneil, Moyers and Russert.

-SJ

Baby Steps

I'm going to admit defeat in the health care reform debate. I'm just going to get out ahead of the White House and Congress and admit that there is simply no middle ground in this debate. I'm not talking about the middle ground between the Democrats and Republicans. I mean there's no middle ground between Democrats and between the Houses of Congress. It is becoming more clear that congress may pass a bill with a public option, but the senate never will.

It's time for the White House to retreat to a defensible position. I believe that the debate got away from the President when he was unable to define exactly what health care reform would mean for most Americans. The genie is out of the bottle at this point. There is no way to get the sweeping change that was promised through the Congress this year. The Right has done a masterful job of bringing out all the hot button issues to bear on this debate, from abortion to illegal immigrants. The administration spends so much time trying to combat these bogus charges (which more than 50% of the public believe by the way) that it's message has gotten lost.

I have a plan though. I'm not sure that anyone will follow it, but I do think it might actually be more effective. Health reform this year should be limited to introducing new regulations for the Health insurance industry. The legislation should make it illegal for the insurance companies to either deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions, or drop someone once their application has been approved. The last regulation should be that the lifetime caps on coverage should be eliminated. That's it. No mandates for universal coverage, no mandates for employer coverage, no public option, no single payer. Just some common sense regulations that will make the insurance companies policies a lot more equitable. The Republicans will of course oppose the legislation on some far fetched ground, but it will be easy to explain to the people and all Democrats should be able to get on board with it.

If those major insurance regulations could be pushed through this year, the President could claim a major victory. It's is now pretty clear that health care reform has to be done in smaller steps. It is apparent that something as complicated as a major health care overhaul is simply too much for the majority of the people to understand and is subject to the most spurious of attacks. The people have to be force fed their medicine. Perhaps if we give it to them in small doses they'll never be aware of how much they've actually swallowed. I say the President takes on one health care initiative a year as part of his planned agenda. Explain one thing at a time, have a unified message, and that will make it all less scary for most Americans. Perhaps this is the approach that the White House has. Maybe they've been planning this all along. I know that the President is much smarter than me and so are the people working for him, so I would find it hard to believe if I'm the first to come up with this idea.

This effort cannot go to waste. Substantial insurance reform would be a giant step in the right direction. If you have been watching and listening to the President closely during his recent town hall meetings, he has subtly turned his mentions of reform from health care reform into health insurance reform. Could that have been his goal all along? Maybe. Or maybe I'm just dreaming.

The Answer Is a Referendum on the Public Option

The Single Payer option was “aborted” before the current Health Care proposals took shape, and there was silence.

At least silence from the 50 million uninsured in America. 50 million people. Sure, many of them are homeless, living below the poverty line, but many are also the recently unemployed. If some small fraction of that population showed up to town halls and demanded what they in fact need, no amount of bussed-in patsies could shout them down.

No one can drown out a terminally-ill child who is refused care, or worse –never had it.

No one can tell the sick they don’t need what they need.

No lobbyist can fool the dying.

Now the Public Option, a proposed government-run no-profit structure is also endangered. It seems that we Americans have long ago given up the idea that we have a right to anything, as long as someone happens to be shouting in the room.

What’s remarkable about the attempts at derailing Health Care reform this time, is just how naked and transparent they are. Right wing propaganda arm, Fox News continues to parade around “experts” who have career-long histories of stepping on Americans to further the cause of the HMOs and the Health Care industry: lobbyists, former lobbyists and PR people masquerading as Think Tank members, or independent consultants. It’s no different a ploy than the bookings and interviews of all the so-called “experts” during the run up to the current Iraq War, many of whom turned out to have ties to defense contractors and other war profiteers.

But all in all, across the GOP’s talk/shout radio apparatus, across its right wing blogosphere is the insistence on talking about anything (including fictions and lies like “death panels”) that will confuse the issue of providing Medical care coverage to Americans with issues that incense and mobilize irrational opposition in voters. Any bill that has the mere mention of “abortion” in it will make some people take to the street every time; whether a reference to abortion is actually in the bill isn’t really of consequence if someone on Fox News or the Far Right says it is.

But something else may be happening behind the backs of all who are angry, silent, agitated, confused, hopeful or despondent in America.

Something truly diabolical and in my opinion far worse than the theatrical opposition of John Boehner and the contrived, specious doubts of Eric Cantor is happening behind America’s back.
As I wrote today in response to my co contributor and founder of this blog; I now suspect that no one in government wants real healthcare reform. Not the Republicans and not enough of the Democrats, just Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Howard Dean (not currently in elected office although somehow he’s managed to say more about the Public Option than anyone with the possible exception of Senator Chuck Schumer of New York) and Dennis Kucinich. The GOP has repeatedly said it will not sign any of the proposals for Health Care. Their reasons for opposition are as groundless and ridiculous as they are intractable. The Republicans simply don’t want change of any kind; they want nothing that would interrupt the flow of dollars from Health Care lobbyists to their campaigns.

However the continued willingness of the Democrats in the Senate and our President to bargain away key items and programs in the bills will not garner one single vote as my co-contributor has pointed out repeatedly on this blog. While this bargaining will do nothing in the way of accumulating the fabled “bipartisan” support President Obama has said he wants, it does in fact do something else: It fulfills the Health Care lobby's goals.

Are Senate Democrats afraid to wholly "own" Health Care reform, are they insisting on shared responsibility to avoid a replay of the tribal schisms and regional polarizations created by the enactment of the civil rights legislation of the 60s that caused them to “lose the South” for decades? I suspect the reason is much more venal in nature.I suspect that many Democrats are allowing the Health Care Reform efforts to be whittled-down from without, so they can publicly say they did all they could, while not openly upsetting their own pay stream from K street lobbies. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m paranoid, but it doesn't really matter does it?
-Ultimately the result and consequence is the same, regardless of motive and intent on the part of whomever, or whatever party. 50 million people will go on with life (and death) in America without Health coverage.

The rest of us live at the mercy of an industry that will let any one of us die if we cost them too much money.

… Maybe the Health Insurance Industry is where Sarah Palin’s imaginary “death panels” reside? -No, even they don’t have “death panels.”
What they do have are lawyers and entire legal divisions devoted to weird and now lethal concepts like “rescission,” but again the result and consequence is much the same.

While the Republican Party pats itself on the back for its successful obstruction and distraction, those now familiar throngs of panic-driven shouters remain the loudest voices in the discussion right now. How is it that these mobs bus themselves (or are sponsored) from Town Hall to Town Hall unopposed?

If Health Care reform dies, it'll be because all the people who determined the last presidential election in November remained silent.

The Health Care industry will continue to prey on Americans and business big and small. With no Public Option, there is no reform. We should be able to count on our representatives, our senators to do defend our concerns but the truth is, they too listen to the loudest voices in the room. Right now the uninsured are not heard above the shouting of the new “thug politic” and whatever money and favors elected officials received from the Health Care industry. Money still talks very loudly, and it downright drowns out a pre-term baby, a teenager with MS or a mother dying of cancer.

How do Americans combat the “thug politic” that is screaming nonsense at televised Town Halls around the country?

How do Americans who voted for change, insist on change?

How can you be heard over some misinformed lunatic at a televised Town Hall meeting?
My suggestion is something very radical and very American:

-A national referendum on the Public Option.

Call or email your local, state and federal representatives and ask about the process, and let them know it’s about the Public Option:

The President and Vice President:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Your US Senators:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Your Representatives in the House:
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Ask for a referendum on the Public Option now.

…or you know, just drop dead.

-SJ

Peace With Honour

For some reason Neville Chamberlain is on my mind today. This morning the Secretary of Health signaled that the White House is ready to wave the white flag on the public option for health care, which is in my opinion, the backbone of the proposed legislation. A month ago I wrote an article in which I expressed my frustration over what I perceived to be a lack of commitment on the part of the Obama administration to real health care reform. First of all the only way to truly control the spiraling cost of health care is with a single payer system. However the Democrats gave up that fight before they even started down the reform road. Since single payer had been so demonized during the Clinton attempt at health care reform, they decided that they would forgo it this time in order to try and keep the rhetoric to a minimum. So before this current attempt at health care reform had even begun, they had already conceded the best option to control costs and to make sure that everyone receives some level of coverage.

It seemed naive to me at the time to believe that by conceding this option it would lead to less vitriol from the opponents of real reform and events have proven this point. As I have said previously, the Republicans are not interested in bi-partisanship. Their only goal is to defeat the President's agenda. The Democrats continue to concede point after point (the provision to provide end of life counseling is, if you pardon the pun, dead) in the name of bi-partisanship when the Republicans have no intention of voting for a health care reform bill regardless of the number of concessions that are made. If a bill does receive solid bi-partisan support you can rest assured that calling it a "reform" bill would be massive misnomer. In a town hall meeting this week the President singled out Chuck Grassley as a Republican who was trying to find ways to get bi-partisan agreement on the reform bill. The next day Grassley told an audience that the government shouldn't be in the business of killing grandma.

Each concession that the Democrats make only serves to embolden the opposition. The question becomes, is our government in the business of protecting the private insurance companies or protecting the health and well being of it's own citizens? Each concession in the never ending chase for phantom Republican votes only takes us further and further away from true reform. The Democrats are going to have to pass this bill on their own. They now have to figure out whether they want to pass something truly historic and helpful to the citizens of this nation or whether they want the GREAT HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL OF 2009 to become just another footnote in the history of politics of usual in Washington D.C.

Sound and Fury

I wake everyday to the same nonsense over and over again. I have to listen to the opponents of health care make up claims about "death panels" and other extreme positions that have nothing to do with the proposed bill in Congress. I have to listen to people talk about how afraid they are of what is happening to their country and how we need to "take our country back". I have to listen to this supposed organic movement talk about how this country is on the road to socialism. I have to listen to senior citizens say that they want the government to keep its hands off their medicare. I have to listen to the right wing media talk about the 1st amendment when they spent the previous eight years calling anyone who opposed the President un-American, treasonous and worse. I have to listen to people compare our President to Adolf Hitler and the Democratic leadership to the Nazis. I have to listen to Glenn Beck appeal to his audience not to get violent over this protest and then joke about poisoning the Speaker of the House.

This is no longer a "debate" about health care reform. This becomes just another outlet for the Right to get out their talking points about the President. Could anyone with a brain actually believe that the Congress would pass a law that sets up "death panels"? Of course not, but why let that stop them. But if you keep shouting socialism! and fascism! and Hitler! and Nazi! long and loud enough, you may just get some people to pay attention. People who oppose the President not because of what he stands for, but because of who he is are very attuned to the buzz words of the campaign to defeat health care reform. After all, they don't want someone who wasn't even born in America to tell them what to do. And I won't even get into the fact of how corporations get citizens to work against their own self interest (that is a story for another day).

There is real anger in this country, but it's not about health care reform. I think the vast majority of people in this country would be in favor of a system that stops the insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Or stops the insurance companies from increasing rates if you happen to make a claim against your coverage. Or lowers costs so that even poor Americans can get coverage. Those are universally helpful measures. The real anger in this country comes from the person pushing the message. While the Clinton health reform push was defeated by misinformation, fear, and millions from the insurance companies, this attempt at health reform might be defeated by hate.

The opponents of this President "want their country back". Well, I hate to be the one to tell them this but "their country" doesn't exist anymore and that is a good thing. Our last election proved to me (and if you read this blog, you will know that I was extremely skeptical) that this country has indeed moved on in a way. The country that allowed the Republicans to dominate the Presidential elections for the previous 40 years, has indeed changed. The fallout from the Civil Rights Act that allowed the Republicans to tap into white, southern anger has finally run its course. I believe what we are seeing now are the death throes of that movement. The loud, angry, vitriolic death throes of a movement whose time has past.

These are indeed desperate times for those who long for the days when white equalled right. The influx of Hispanics into the mainstream of this country scares the hell out of them (John McCain's vote against the confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor was his first against ANY nominee to the supreme court). Having a Black President scares the hell out of them. Losing control scares the hell out them. There was a day when these things weren't possible. There was a day when they controlled the "debate" in this country. There was a day when fear of the known and unknown kept us from fulfilling our destiny as a nation. I can only hope that day has passed. The anger is real and loud, but at the end of the day it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.

Home Invasion

Henry Louis Gates was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after getting into an argument with a police officer. This would be a major story given professor Gates' reputation. However the fact that he was arrested in his own home and that he is a friend of the sitting President of the United States makes it a media storm.

I have no doubt that Mr. Gates was extremely upset to be accosted in his own home by a police officer. I also have no doubt that his reaction was based not only on the current situation, but a lifetime of racial bias that he has had to face. Was his reaction more emotional than rational? Probably. Was he justified in reacting the way he did? Probably. I believe that if you are in your own home and have committed no crime, then the police have no right to treat you like a criminal. The police officer in this case will now get a lot of support from the Right. People like Rush Limbaugh are already rushing to give their views in favor of the officer. This once again proves the hypocrisy that comes from that side of the aisle. The Republicans are the first to talk about the sanctity of the home and an individuals right to privacy. If this had happened to George Will, and he would have been arrested by a black police officer in his home, the outrage from the Right would be palpable.

I have written about this topic before and I frankly hate to repeat myself, but unless you are a black male in this country, you have no idea what if feels like to be afraid to step outside your front door in fear what the very people who are supposed to protect you might bring to bear. I live in New York City and there is no neighborhood or group of people or time of night that causes me more fear than the sight of New York City police officer heading my way. I have first hand experience of being wrongly arrested and abused by the people that we call "New York's Finest". The funny thing is that I actually feel fortunate that I didn't have to grow up in Boston. In his early years, the comedian Chris Rock told a joke that went something like this, "I was in South Africa the other day...Or was it Boston". Boston is the town that reacted the most violently to forced busing in the seventies. Boston is the town that still has de facto segregation to this day. Boston is the town that being black is still a cause for alarm, unless you play for the Celtics or Red Sox.

Was race a factor in the arrest of Professor Gates? Of course it was. Would both men have acted differently if they were of the same race. Of course they would have. If Professor Gate were white would a 911 call even have been placed? debatable. The point here is that once a police officer shows up at the residence of an individual, what should be the threshold for then allowing that officer to arrest any person that lives there? I am not sure what the answer is to that question, but given the accounts of the proceedings given by both Professor Gates and the Officer, I am confident that the threshold was not breached. Would the Officer have arrested an elderly, semi-disabled, white Harvard professor? You can bet your last bowl of New England Clam Chowder that he would not have. The multi-cultural support for this officer from the Cambridge police department doesn't impress me. The New York Police department has never been held accountable for firing over 80 shots at an unarmed man and hitting him with over 40 in the doorway of his own apartment. And they were only held accountable for sodomizing an innocent man and causing life threatening internal injuries after one of dozens of officers decided that he couldn't maintain his silence anymore.

Actions speak much louder than words. If you think that race plays no part in any of this, I would just ask you to look at the growing movement that is questioning whether the President was born in this country. The absolutely only reason it's a question is because of his race. The language from the opposition is couched in the terms of "taking the country back". Glen Beck promotes gun ownership as a rational response to losing an election. I remember when 5 people on the Supreme Court decided who our next President was going to be. There were a lot of disappointed people, but I don't remember anyone of any national prominence promoting armed revolution. Why is it okay to question the legitimacy of a President who won his election with a decisive majority of the American people voting for him? He's black. It's as simple as that. Having a black President is a huge step forward for this country, but being black still means that there's a bullseye on your back.

Have Another Donut, You Fat Pig!

On Glen Beck's daily spewing of nonsense today he was attacking a government program that purchases food for food banks and soup kitchens. His initial argument was that the government was overspending for these products (which seems reasonable enough), but of course this poor excuse for a human being couldn't leave it at that. Responding to a comment by the by the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack that the program, "provides assistance to people who otherwise do not have access to food", Beck said, " Wow! I didn't know in America that we had people that didn't have access to food". I have no idea how someone can be so insulated that they wouldn't know that there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who go to bed hungry every night. Does he think the homeless are just sitting on a pile of money? Does he think those people begging for money on the street are just doing that to kill time? People like him should be forced to live on the street and he can see just how much "access" he has to food. Perhaps it might help that fat tub of lard to lose some weight.

He has a book out now called "Common Sense". It reminds of a Saturday Night Live sketch in which there was a game show called "Common Knowledge". The answers to all the questions were not the right answers, but the one's that most people believed to be true. That is exactly what he is selling. He is selling lies to people who are too lazy to actually find the truth. It's a shame that "reporting" has reached these depths.

The Lion in Winter

The health care debate has reached a crossroad. The Republicans and the insurance industry are staging a full frontal assault on the reform bills now working their ways through the House and the Senate. They have decided that the President is vulnerable on this issue and have gone so far as to proclaim that this issue will be his Waterloo. The President to his credit has finally jumped into the fight with both guns blazing. His statements, which used to be very conciliatory toward the opposition, have become more pointed and emphatic. His staff is no longer talking about a bipartisan bill, they are now talking about the reality of having Democrats push this through on their own.

The President has to make the point that health care reform is not a policy question, it is a moral imperative. The health and well being of the citizens of this country is not something to bartered with or toyed with because of political differences. Republicans offer no alternative to the current proposal. Michael Steele went so far as to say that he doesn't even know what's in the bill. It is very clear that Obama's opponents don't have any strategy to fix the health care crisis, they only want to block anything that comes out of this administration.

The conservative Democrats have a different agenda. They are trying to placate the constituents in their right leaning states and districts. Their single issue is cost. They have to be sure that any program does not add to the bloated deficit. I do not believe that they are actually opposed to health care reform. Of course if they do not get on board at the end of the day, their opposition, regardless of how principled it is, will sink our only chance to give Americans a proper health care system. I have to believe that if push comes to shove, they will vote with the majority. If not to approve the bill then at least to end a republican attempt at a filibuster.

We, as a people, should have a right to decent health care. I have stated before that each elected official should be willing to do the right thing even though it may be a losing issue in their next election. We vote people into office not only to do our bidding, but also to do what is best. The people don't always know what is in their best interest. Just look at California. The fact that everything is up for a vote has led them to a budget crisis of biblical proportions. They need more revenue, but refuse to vote for any tax increases. "The People" want everything for nothing. "The People" cannot always be trusted to make the right decision. Our elected officials are not supposed to be as shortsighted as "The People". If their only concern is getting re-elected, then the needs of the people take a backseat to that goal.

It is a given that there are many in both houses of Congress who do not care if the majority of citizens of this country have adequate health care. They have been bought and paid for by the health insurance industry. That however should not stop the majority from doing what they know is right. I understand that no one wants to have to go to their constituents and tell them that health care reform is going to cost them money, but as with most of the great moral crusades of the last century, cost is not the important factor. We will of course save money if we are a healthier nation, but that is too forward looking for most in this country to understand. Sometimes “We the People” have to dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing. I can only hope that we have enough representatives who comprehend how significant this issue is and how monumental a difference it will make in the lives of all our citizens.

President Kennedy spoke of civil rights as a moral crisis. He tragically didn’t live long enough to see the eventual passage of the Civil Rights Bill. Critics at the time attacked the bill as government interference in private enterprise. They argued that the government has no place in dictating the actions of the private sector. They argued that we needed less government, not more. Time has proved these arguments wrong. His brother Ted Kennedy has made universal health care his life’s work. He has pushed for universal coverage since the early seventies. He has spoken about the fact that he and his family have always received the highest level of care. However, unlike some of his more callous fellow members of Congress (Senator Grassley had the nerve to offer this bit of advice as to how to get the same level of coverage that he enjoys, “get a government job”), he has always said that he wants all Americans to have access to that same level of care. As Kennedy battles brain cancer, he is doing all he can to lend his support to this most important of issues. It is his life’s work, it is his legacy. It is the moral imperative of our time. Let us hope that we are up to the challenge and I believe that time will treat the opponents of health care as well as it has treated the opponents of the Civil Rights Bill.

When Money Is Involved, Anything Is Possible

Recently Californians voted to ban Gay marriage last fall. Now, this state with a revenue base larger than that of many countries is broke, issuing IOUs to vendors and contractors and suspending vital services as it attempts to close a budget gap that is not so much a distance to be bridged, but an asteroid crater to filled: the budget is short by $26.3 billion dollars American. Gay marriage wouldn’t fly somehow in California (Utah’s meddling not-withstanding, it should’ve passed. I don’t care how many TV commercials the religious Right bought) but the legalization of Marijuana just might go over.

San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano introduced a bill this past February that would make it legal for adults 21 and over to grow and sell Marijuana within the state of California. Back in February there was the usual laughter by the establishment that insists on seeing a huge difference between drugs like alcohol and so called “narcotics.” We largely have William Randolph Hearst to thank for this distinction but that’s another story. Now a bill to tax and regulate marijuana in California (like the US does with alcohol) is appearing a little more attractive. The reason for this abrupt change of heart is pretty obvious. For California, taxing Marijuana production and its sales would generate nearly $1.4 billion dollars. The California State Board of Equalization has issued a report that “estimates marijuana sales would bring $990 million from a $50-per-ounce fee and $392 million in sales taxes.”

Tom Gray of The Brains was right: “Money changes everything.”

I’ll go one further and reassert that while money does not buy happiness; it sure makes life easier for those who have it. Money makes the world go ‘round and makes the impossible practical and concrete. There was an old joke in the 1980s that went something along the lines of “If handling golf clubs gave people AIDS, we would have had a cure by now.” And so it is with so many things in our country and the world. Money drives policy, law and society. Those with enough of it, tell the rest of us to go to hell in different ways and fashions. It would seem that the only way for Lesbians and Gays to get a marriage bill passed in California is for them to threaten to leave the state en masse and move to one of the states that actually recognizes them with equal status under the law in the same manner and measure as their fellow heterosexual citizens; basically take their money: earnings power, spending power, savings and run for the hills.

If money really is power, or more bluntly, money is the highest power attainable in global society, (and it clearly remains so) then the poor in particular have no hope whatsoever other than to become their oppressors. It’s a bleak but undeniable picture of our country and our world. The philosopher, sociologist, critic and historian Michel Foucault once wrote: “Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex ‘strategical’ situation in a particular society.” One consequence of this line of thinking is that “power relations” are inescapable for human beings. You cannot abstain from them, not even by going to a deserted island and never so much as picking up a coin from the sands. Even as an isolated hermit, your contribution or drain on the economy can be computed by an economist or statistician in the way an engineer can compute “sag” acting on any physical object in any context or condition. I disagree somewhat with Foucault’s attribution of indistinct namelessness and formlessness to the notion of “power” because in our world society, that ‘strategical’ situation Foucault spoke of is legal tender: the dollar; the Euro; the Yen; and so on.

Marijuana legalization, Housing Reform, Immigration Reform, Gay marriage, Healthcare Reform and just about every other issue wherein people are being denied rights has to be “monetized” in order to gain traction in America, and that is just so fucking sad.

-SJ

Talking Loud and Saying Nothing.

“Barack Obama would not have gotten elected if he'd let us in on his secret plan prior to the election. He would not have gotten elected if he'd said: ‘My idea is to create a $1.8 trillion deficit for the next fiscal year.’”
-Jeb Bush in an interview with Tucker Carlson

…A lie, within a lie, supporting a lie.
But he went on:

“I'm not saying abandon our principles. To the contrary: Find creative ways of expressing the principles.”
-Jeb Bush

"The nation’s economy can’t endure anymore 'Republican creativity.'"
-Sandy Jimenez

I can only imagine the smile on Tucker Carlson’s face as this was said aloud far away from the ears of anyone with any common sense who would question or contest it. Only blind, supplicant, gullible Right Wing voters can swallow this kind of nonsense: those masses who still want to believe whatever they are told is in their best interests to believe. Clear thinking, principled Republicans can at best remain mute when they hear this tired variety of pabulum, lest they be called traitors to their party or worse. It seems there are few options for Conservatives with questions about how the candidates and policymakers they supported for twenty five years wrecked the country. Nobody can put in plain words why the loudest voices in the Right Wing establishment today only want another chance to do it all over again. Republicans are owed an explanation; instead they’re being given more orders and told to sit tight while the remaining elected Republican officials in power say “no” to just about everything happening in Washington DC and the world.

If one only directly addressed the sheer managerial ineptitude of the last Republican administration, scores of arrest warrants and retroactive impeachments would have to be issued.

For my part, I’m going to lay off the Republicans for a while, at least until the GOP starts some new nonsense, because their silly attempts at disowning the economic collapse; their pathetic denials of the runaway Wall Street crime wave they abetted and all but legalized are making me repeat myself as well. It’s better not to be mired in bullshit at all, but especially someone else’s.

Barack Hussein Obama is the President of the United States.

Those words stab like ice picks into the ears of some, but the only thing those Americans are indicating with their unspecified disgust and thoughtless adamantine opposition is that they are part of the past. Just as Ronald Reagan ushered in an era of deregulating, pro-corporate, Right-tilted rule that all but said that the moneyed-Rich elites in our country will tell the rest of us what to expect from government; Barack Obama’s White House signifies, at least by our collective act of electing him to the presidency, a new era in which the many are demanding new purpose and action from the government they empower, while letting the wealthy few remain just that, for now. At least that was the promise of last November.
That promise is in fact the not-so-secret plan Jeb Bush is lying to Tucker Carlson about. That is what Jeb Bush is trying to scare Americans away from. -Good luck Jeb: Say hello to your brother at the Crawford ranch for me; the unemployed; the uninsured; and all those veterans coming back to the ruins of the economy that he and your rich buddies wrecked. I can’t imagine how you two punks manage to look your father in the face without crying every time.

For the Obama administration and the rest of us, the job at hand, (GOP interference not withstanding,) is as historic as it is Herculean.

There are still two wars going on. We have an economy that won’t fix itself. We are in a new, historically lowered “normal” for heavy industry, media, finance and international trade that is exposing the groundless, credit and debt-based foundation of American “prosperity” of the post-Reagan era. We have 50 million uninsured people. We are in an energy crisis that is economic, social and environmental in its threat to the human race.

What does this Administration plan to do when its bipartisan fantasy of sharing vision (and responsibility) is inarguably, undeniably over? The Republicans have made it clear that their definition of Bipartisanship means concessions on policy and legislation made by all… save themselves.

This Democratic majority in government must differentiate this era by beating back the excesses begun in the Nixon era by transnational big business. They must do it with law, with subsidized programs and regulation.

But they can’t do it by negotiating with politicians, (be they Republicans or their own Democrats cravenly beholden to corporate paymasters) who oppose the core ideals of Progressive reform and brand such imperative policies and programs such as Universal Healthcare as exclusively “Socialist.”

The more time the Obama Administration and its informal coalitions in the House and Senate spend trying to get the support of “all” Senators and Congressmen while they have a majority, is the more time the nefarious lobbying interests have to organize and reframe the issues with well-funded lies. The more time the Obama administration wastes, the more diluted its public mandate becomes.

Why have they wasted so much time and effort negotiating with politicians who have already stated that their starting posture in any conversation is “no?”

What are Democrats, the closest current custodians of the Progressive agenda, going to do other than fall into disunity in the face of the same corporate interests that made Republicans betray America in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s to every major industrial lobby on K Street?

Al Franken is the United States Senator from Minnesota.

While that may feel like corkscrews winding into eardrums to the likes of Bill O’Reilly and other pro –establishment-anti-working class propagandists masquerading as TV pundits, it’s a further block in this potential foundation for “the Great Society” President Johnson struggled for but ultimately abandoned after he dug in his heels refusing to pull back from the Vietnam war. Operating in a filibuster-free Senate is a fragile and temporary condition. Democrats have to act quickly, if they are to act meaningfully. They have to forge ahead and dispense with the public shows of egalitarianism and contrived acts of inclusion. It didn’t work and it won’t. The Republicans don’t care how venal and greedy they look or how ridiculous they sound when they tell Americans they don’t think we should have Health Insurance -like the medical coverage we all pay for them to have.

Republicans don’t care how stupid they sound when they now start talking about fiscal responsibility, as if they didn’t tank the economy and send jobs overseas and let the worlds of finance and investment banking run out of control. The Democrats just have to pull their party together, straighten out the cowards and sell outs in their midst behind closed doors and get to work immediately.

The question remains: of all the things the Democrats said they were going to do, -What are they willing to do?

I “see” a lot of talk, but I’m not hearing anything.

-SJ

The Most Dangerous Person in America

Sarah Palin announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska in a rambling and unfocused press conference last Friday. In fact, she made Mark Sanford seem like the epitome of coherence. Those on the left were quick to proclaim that this was the death knell for Mrs. Palin as a serious candidate for President in 2012. Those on the Right were quick to point out that she is now free from the burden of running a state and can now make even more appearances where she can spread her message.

If we were living in "normal" times, those hopeful thinkers on the left may indeed be right, but we are not living in normal times. The Republican party has been reduced to its core elements. Social conservatives now dominate the base of the party and those are the very people who find Sarah Palin irresistible. We must also remember that over 58 million people voted for her in the last election. I understand that she was not at the top of the ticket, but she was only a heartbeat away from the top job which would have been held by a 73 year old, 2 time cancer survivor.

Sarah Palin is the most ill-prepared person proposed for national office that I have ever seen. She has no understanding of the Constitution (illustrated by her constant misstatement of what the 1st Amendment means), she couldn't explain what Conservatism is if you spotted her Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and she is dead set against learning what she doesn't know. That last point is what makes her so dangerous. Anybody with the lack of understanding of national and international issues that she has demonstrated and with the family issues that were forced to be played out on a national stage, would have declined the offer to join the McCain ticket. However her personal ambition outweighs any family obligation or reasonable action.

Despite all her shortcomings, the base of Republican party has anointed her as the savior of the party. Republican pundits have even compared her to Richard Nixon. Nixon uttered the famous, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore", after losing to Pat Brown in the California Governor's race. Nixon, of course, returned 6 years later to become a two term President. However comparing Richard Nixon to Sarah Palin is like comparing an Indy race car to a scooter. At the time that Richard Nixon made his famous concession, he had been a 2 term Congressman, a Senator, a two term Vice President and had lost a closely contested and controversial election for President. For all his shortcomings, I don't think that there is anyone who would question his intelligence or his skill as a politician and statesman. Sarah Palin, a first term Governor of Alaska, was as recently as 4 years ago, voted mayor of a town with approximately 600 votes. The comparison is ridiculous on its face and becomes even more ridiculous when you compare the two. She has also been compared to the great communicator himself, Ronald Reagan. Of course Reagan had become politically aware as part of the Conservative movement. He was schooled by the likes of Barry Goldwater himself and cut his teeth as Governor of California. Ronald Reagan's intellect will never be confused with Richard Nixon's, however he knew what he stood for.

Sarah Palin doesn't know what she stands for. Her speeches contain no details, no policies, no directions for how she intends to "make America a better place for all Americans". She simply spews talking points and applause lines. Her ego is so large that she would probably never allow someone around her who doesn't agree with everything she says, or at least they wouldn't be around her for long. I have nightmares about this woman being in charge of our international policy. Can you imagine this woman as our representative around the world? Can you imagine her having a serious discussion with the leaders of the rest of the world? George Bush at least had the awareness to understand that he needed smart people around him. They were evil for the most part, but they were undoubtedly very intelligent. I don't think Bush ever had a problem with not being the smartest guy in the room.

Sarah Palin, almost unbelievably, thinks that she is the smartest person in any room that she's in. She would surround herself with people who would be unwilling or unable to disagree with her on any topic. It would be an absolute disaster. I honestly don't understand how anyone could hope for this to come to pass. There are smart people on the right, who for unknown reasons support Sarah Palin. It could be desperation, it could be... actually there is no other reason. It has to be desperation. I hope that in the years before the next Presidential election, the Republicans come up with an alternative. I fear, however, that wishful thinking will not be enough to get rid of the spectre that is Sarah Palin. She will be with us for the foreseeable future. Unless there's a scandal out there that we don't know about. That might be more wishful thinking I'm afraid.

The $60 Billion Solution

I feel like I have written this article before (as has my co-contributor), and yet I can't help but return to the health care debate. Howard Dean was on TV recently and he said that if health care reform does not include a public option, then it would be basically worthless. As I watch our President say that there is no line in the sand in the health care debate, I again wonder aloud what exactly the goal of this administration is on this topic.

The arguments against a public option have basically been boiled down to two positions that are inconsistent with each other and are yet voiced simultaneously. The first position, which is favored by the insurance providers and their lackeys in Congress, is that, they (the insurance companies) would be driven out of business by a government option. The claim is that so many people would chose the public option (because it would be cheaper, better and less cumbersome) that the insurance providers would not be able to stay in business. The President called this point into question yesterday when he said:

" The notion that all these insurance companies who say they’re giving consumers the best possible deal, if they can’t compete against a public plan as one option, with consumers making the decision what’s the best deal, that defies logic..."

The Insurance companies and the members of Congress that they own, will continue to claim that the government option would drive them out of business without stating the real reason why that is the case. As has been stated here before, the companies are in the business of making money. They are not in the business of providing Americans with the best health care possible, therefore it only makes sense that they would not be able to compete with a system that makes the actual health of Americans the top priority. A significant portion of the resources of the insurance companies goes to trying to find ways to deny claims of the people that they currently insure. How could they possibly compete against a competitor who doesn't spend a large portion of their income on trying to screw their own customers? Republicans are constantly arguing for a free marketplace. Why would they now be afraid of a little competition? If, as the insurance companies and the many well compensated spokespeople in Congress claim, we do in fact have the best health care in the world, then having a public option would provide very little competition indeed. Why on earth would people give up their current coverage if they felt like it was the best plan available?

The second claim is that the public option would lead to American getting less medical care than they are now receiving. "We don't want to be like Canada" becomes the clarion call of this particular group of sycophants. So this argument claims (in total opposition to the other one) that under a public plan, the health of Americans would actually suffer. They talk about health care being rationed and long waits for transplants and lack of money for new equipment and fewer doctors being available and government bureaucrats making your health decisions. All of this presupposes that our current options are fantastic and that we are thrilled about insurance company paper pushers making our health care decisions. My question is, which is it? Is the public option going to be so great that it breaks the backs of the insurance providers or is it going be the beginning of the end? I guess it's too much to ask the opponents of the plan for a consistent message.

And if all else fails, they point to the money. How on earth can we pay for this? $1.6 trillion!!!! Inconceivable! Pointing to the money is of course the easiest way to take attention away from the human cost of not getting real health care reform done in the near future. No one talks about the 50 million who are uninsured. No one talks about the tens of thousands who die each needlessly because they could not afford to seek medical attention. No one talks about the millions who are saddled with crippling debt for medical procedures even though they were "covered" by private insurance. No one talks about the fact that our some of our major industries are now big health providers who also happen to manufacture something. No one talks about the fact that in ten years the only growth industries left in the this country will be tied to health care and the insurance companies. No, they don't want to talk about that. Let's just talk about the cost. That will scare Americans into demanding that nothing gets done. I have a simple plan for this. Like the Iraq war (which is going to cost upwards of $2 trillion), let's just claim the same opening figure that the Bush administration did for that endeavor. The cost for complete health care reform that will cover every American is $60 billion.