Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Obama & Democrats Give Americans a Healthcare Con Job for Christmas
By Kevin Gosztola
In the final moments before passage, Americans will whine about how Republicans are Scrooges and do not understand the meaning of Christmas and they should pass this bill for the poor instead of always giving to the rich. And, some Americans will sympathize with Democrats who have to be in the Senate on Christmas Eve and cannot be with their families because Republicans continue to obstruct passage of health reform.
Corporate Democrats and the Obama Administration stand ready to deliver a gift to Americans on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies and private insurance industry in America: health reform.
Cloaked in the spirit of the holiday season, Americans will let politicians shove this right under their Christmas tree somewhere between little Timmy's Zhu Zhu Pets and daddy's new GPS navigator, which many Americans probably managed to barely squeeze onto their Visa Mastercard.See the words recently spoken by Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL) as he read his own version of the famous Christmas poem, "Twas the Night Before Christmas."
"Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Senate/ the right held up our health care bill no matter what was in it/The people had voted, had mandated reform/ 'We'll clog up the senate,' they cried with a grin, and in the midterm elections, we'll get voted in""
Democrats hope Americans will focus on those in Congress like Sen. Kit Bond and Sen. Chuck Grassley who should be visited by three ghosts before this holiday season is over. They have setup this final vote with the hope that Americans will forget the part about how this Senate bill doesn't have a Medicare buy-in, doesn't have a public option, doesn't support a woman's right to choose an abortion or have full access to all forms of reproductive health care, etc.
They hope deals Big Pharma cut with the Obama Administration to make sure Congress didn't attempt to use government leverage to lower the prices of drugs or support a measure to allow the importation of generic drugs from countries outside the U.S. won't be thought of and the fact that a Medicare for All single-payer health care plan was effectively kept off the table and out of the discussion all year long to the detriment of the American people and for the benefit of health insurance and drug companies in America won't be a problem for a majority of Americans at all.
And, it looks like Obama and Democrats will succeed in passing this without any threats of civil unrest or resistance to how it empowers corporate and special interests getting in the way.
Which means, as Americans sip eggnog, few will grasp the reality that they are going to be forced to buy "poor-quality insurance they can't afford to use," which means that they may pay around "$11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above" their already expensive premiums.[1]
While baking those holiday cookies with loved ones, few will think about the insurance plan they have right now through their employer and how this bill will be paid for by taxes on this plan so that means their employer will inevitably cut back on benefits and increase co-pays. They won't think to wonder why they must start to pay taxes on this bill now if they aren't going to see benefits from the bill and an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions until 2014.[2]
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama--Democrats-Give-Ame-by-Kevin-Gosztola-091223-261.html
Peace Activists to Set Up Encampment in Washington
by: Scott Galindez, t r u t h o u t | Report
In March of 2010, Cindy Sheehan and other activists from a group calling itself "Peace of the Action" will be converging on Washington, DC, to set up a camp on the National Mall.
When asked how long the encampment will last, Sheehan responded, "as long as it takes, that will be up to the government; we are prepared to stay until our demands are met."
Sheehan went on to say that the demands are simple, "troops out of the Middle East, which includes drones, permanent bases, contractors and torture/detention facilities."
Sheehan said that she has known for years that the peace movement needs to take bolder action and that the group's goal will be to hold multiple civil resistance actions daily throughout the nation's capital.
Sheehan said that participants will be asked to adhere to agreed-upon nonviolence guidelines while standing up and resisting against what she called the "robber class."
JACK, JACK: Who’s Got Your Back?
The very life & legacy of Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, is at stake.
by Bonnie King
Jack Herer in his natural environment, at his booth. Photo: Jackherer.com
(SALEM, Ore.) – It's a sad situation. The making of a movie of the week, perhaps. When a world renowned author falls ill, his family and friends become enemies, all professing to do so on his behalf. In the meantime, his health continues to fail, and his good name is tarnished by the very people deemed to uphold it.
Much has been said, some of it true, some of it not true, regarding Jack Herer as of late.
Anchor of the worldwide hemp movement, Jack Herer lies in a bed in a rehabilitation center in Eugene, Oregon, continuing recovery from a heart attack and anoxic brain injury.
Whereas, we reported just over a month ago that he seemed to be making significant progress in his recuperation, now that progress has reportedly stymied.
Jack was rushed to the hospital and admitted November 7th for a four-day stay following dehydration and Stage 5 Renal (kidney) Failure. Doctors spent 35 straight minutes with Jack in Emergency, which is longer than usual to stabilize a patient. Even then, he wasn't stable.
Since then, the battle between those closest to Jack has turned from a skirmish into a war.
DRUG SCREENING REVEALS SHOCKING RESULTS
When Jack was admitted to McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center on November 7th, he was gravely ill with his blood pressure only reading 78/58.
Because doctors questioned the sudden and dramatic illness, the hospital ran a drug screen.
One person who has been consistently on Jack's team, Joy Graves said, "I was notified by a brief phone call that the state of Oregon had an active investigation underway. And, I can see why."
"The day before this test was ran, Avamere had run a drug screen, and it only showed THC, nothing else. So this is absolutely frightening," she added.
The drug screen at McKenzie-Willamette revealed positive for THC (50 ng), Alcohol (20 g/dl), and surprisingly, Amphetamines (1000 ng).
THC: Some might find it laughable that Jack would ever not have THC in his body, after decades of daily cannabis use.
Alcohol: This is a substance that Jack does not imbibe, for over 35 years by some accounts. The theory is that the alcohol may have been part of the hemp mixture he was given, perhaps a tincture, though that has yet to be confirmed.
Amphetamines: How amphetamines came to be in his system is quite the mystery, but the investigation is well underway. That's where this discussion takes an immediate downward turn. And, it is apparently where the State of Oregon decided to step in.
"In his condition, amphetamines are about the farthest thing from what he needs in the world," commented Dr. Phil Leveque, Forensic Toxicologist and friend of Jack Herer. "No doctor would knowingly administer such a thing to a heart patient."
Amphetamines elevate cardiac output and blood pressure making it dangerous for use by patients with a history of heart problems, causing life-threatening complications.
How the amphetamines entered Jack's system is unknown, but the investigation is ongoing.
http://smkrider.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/jack-jack-whos-got-your-back-bonnie-king-salem-news-com/
Taliban claim control of over 80pc of Afghanistan
By Mushtaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR: Rejecting as baseless the US allegations about the presence of Afghan Taliban in the tribal areas, a militant commander said they did not need to flee to the neighbouring country when the Taliban controlled major parts of Afghanistan.
Mulla Sangeen, a key commander of the Afghan Taliban, claimed there was no truth in the US charges, as the Taliban were holding 80 per cent of the territory in Afghanistan.
In his video message, which the Taliban commander claimed was recorded in one of his camps in the Paktika province, he said the Haqqani network was active and based in Afghanistan. Sangeen is also affiliated with the network.
The network, led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, has nominated Sangeen as the shadow governor of Paktika. He said by pressing the government to launch a military operation in North Waziristan, the US was, in fact, trying to weaken the country. He said the US was making efforts to pit Pakistan's armed forces and people against each other. Sangeen said the Taliban had become a strong force and at the moment, they were ruling most of the country with the help of the Afghan people.
"The US knows that we are here in Afghanistan and are fighting against them. The US always levels such allegations whenever it suffers losses at our hands," he stressed.
"Hell on Earth": Released Somali Speaks about Guantánamo
by Andy Worthington
|
Speaking to AFP reporter Mustafa Haji Abdinur in a hotel in Bare's home town of Hargeisa, the capital of the northern breakaway state of Somaliland, Bare declared, "Guantánamo Bay is like hell on Earth." He added, "I don't feel normal yet but I thank Allah for keeping me alive and free from the physical and mental sufferings of some of my friends. Some of my colleagues in the prison lost their sight, some lost their limbs and others ended up mentally disturbed. I'm OK compared to them." |
AFP secured an interview on Monday with Mohamed Saleban Bare (known to the Pentagon as Mohammed Sulaymon Barre), the Somali refugee, Israel to seek another 1b euros Holocaust in reparations from Germany
By Moti Bassok
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz will demand between 450 million to 1 billion euros in reparations from Germany on behalf of Jews forced into slave labor during the Holocaust, it emerged on Sunday.
Minister Steinitz will reportedly present German government with the demand on behalf of 30,000 Israeli survivors of forced labor in wartime ghettos, during a joint session scheduled to take place in early 2010 in Berlin.
Israeli officials estimate that according to a ghetto workers act passed by the German parliament in 2002, all of the 30,000 living forced labor survivors are entitled to a retroactive payment of approximately 15,000 euros each.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
10 Reasons to Kill the Senate Bill
FDL has become the go-to place for coverage of the health care bill due to the work of our incredible team. Jon Walker's second-to-none knowledge of the health care bill has made the policy and political analysis he offers up at FDL Action a driving force. Dave Dayen's reporting at the FDL News Desk, Marcy Wheeler 's research and in-depth analysis at Emptywheel, Laura Flanders' interviews at GritTV, our FDL team of writers and editors, and our community members at The Seminal provide the most independent and comprehensive picture of what's happening moment-by-moment on the health care debate to be found anywhere.
So, I asked them to help make it simple: how do we let people know what's going to happen to them if the Senate bill passes. Everyone put their heads together and came up with a list:
Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill
- Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations - whether you want to or not
- If you refuse to buy the insurance, you'll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.
- Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can't afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums
- Massive restriction on a woman's right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court
- Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays
- Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won't see any benefits - like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions - until 2014 when the program begins.
- Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others
- Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
- No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years
- The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year - meaning in 10 years, your family's insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.
Background information on each point:
- Hardship Waiver And Restrictions On Immigrants Buying Insurance Undercut Arguments For An Individual Mandate, by Jon Walker
- What's in the Manager's Amendment by David Dayen
- MyBarackObama Tax by Marcy Wheeler
- Emperor Ben Nelson: All Your Uteruses Are Belong To Me by Scarecrow
- The Senate Bill is Designed to Make Your Health Insurance Worse by Jon Walker
- Best way to "Fix It Later" Is With No Individual Mandate Now by Jon Walker
- The Senate Health Care Bill is Built on a Mountain of Sand by Jon Walker
- The Devil in Anna Eshoo's Details by Jane Hamsher
- Liveblog of the Dorgan Reimportation Amendment by David Dayen
- Answering Nate Silver's 20 Questions on the Health Care Bill by Jon Walker
The Senate bill isn't a "starter home," it's a sink hole.
The Wrong Stuff
A terrifying show about compulsive hoarders.
Compulsive hoarding is the excessive collection of items, objects, things, stuff, and, quite literally, sentimental junk. On each installment of Hoarders, A&E profiles two people suffering from the disorder, and the channel does so in a way consistent with its gravelly voice. Throughout A&E's transformation from a network airing footage of the cellist Pablo Casals to one scheduling performances by the bounty hunter Dog, it has kept up its interest in noir tales and investigative narratives. Hoarders announces its link to that tradition with a bit of text appearing on-screen near the top of each episode. Rendered in a central-booking typeface, it reads, "More than 3 million people are compulsive hoarders. These are two of their stories." The hoarders stand accused of violating standards of personal hygiene and public health, the laws of the fire marshal and the feng shui master. Having hit bottom, they may be faced with eviction or losing custody of their children. Their homes are crime scenes, and the evidence is everywhere.
Americans Judge The Bush Decade: ‘Awful’ And ‘Not So Good’
According to the poll, a combined 58% said the decade was either "awful" or "not so good," 29% said it was fair, and just 12% said it was either "good" or "great." [...]
Asked what they thought had the greatest negative impact on America this past decade, 38% cited the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 23% picked the mortgage and housing crisis, 20% said the Iraq war, 11% chose the stock market crash, and 6% said Hurricane Katrina.
But 37% said it lost ground on the environment, 46% said it lost ground on health and well being, 50% said it lost ground on peace and national security, 54% said lost ground on the nation's sense of unity, 55% said it lost ground in treating others with respect, 66% said it lost ground on moral values, and a whopping 74% said it lost ground on economic prosperity.
Census Bureau figures released in September largely support the public's pessimistic take on the last decade:
On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially. [...]
Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. … But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.
The poll comes as loyal Bushies are attempting to rewrite the former president's legacy and delude the public into believing that the country's current problems are all the fault of President Obama.
Bush Admin Raised Terror Alert Based On Con Man's Al Jazeera 'Decoding' Scam
by Justin Elliott
A self-styled Nevada codebreaker convinced the CIA he could decode secret terrorist targeting information sent through Al Jazeera broadcasts, prompting the Bush White House to raise the terror alert level to Orange (high) in December 2003, with Tom Ridge warning of "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experience on September 11," according to a new report in Playboy.The report deals another blow to the credibility of the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded terror alert system, and comes after Ridge's claim that the system was used as a political tool when he was DHS secretary.
The man who prompted the December 2003 Orange alert was Dennis Montgomery, who has since been embroiled in various lawsuits, including one for allegedly bouncing $1 million in checks during a Caesars Palace spree. His former lawyer calls him a "habitual liar engaged in fraud."
Working out of a Reno, Nevada, software firm called eTreppid Technologies, Montgomery took in officials in the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and convinced them that technology he invented -- but could not explain -- was pulling terrorist-produced "bar codes" from Al Jazeera television broadcasts. Using his proprietary technology, those bar codes could be translated into longitudes and latitudes and flight numbers. Terrorist leaders were using that data to direct their compatriots about the next target.
But Montgomery's "technology" could not be reproduced, and the Playboy piece explains how he fell out of favor after word of what was going on spread in the CIA:
The federal government was acting on the Al Jazeera claims without even understanding how Montgomery found his coordinates. "I said, 'Give us the algorithms that allowed you to come up with this stuff.' They wouldn't even do that," says the first officer. "And I was screaming, 'You gave these people fucking money?'" ...
Franken’s anti-rape amendment becomes law
The provision was sparked by the gang-rape of a 19-year-old Kellogg, Brown & Root employee by her coworkers in Iraq. After returning to the United States, Jamie Leigh Jones found she couldn't sue the company because of a clause in her employment contract.
Franken's amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act prohibits companies from using employment contracts to bar litigation over sexual assault or discrimination.
When the Senate took up Franken's measure, 30 Republicans voted against it. None cared to explain why, with some suggesting it's simply not the government's business to rewrite employment contracts.
In an especially well-publicized confrontation, a tearful Jones asking Senator David Vitter (R-LA) why he wouldn't support the amendment. He simply walked away.
The group of Senators eventually become a target of a satirical Web site called "Republicans for Rape."
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/frankens-antirape-amendment-law/
Upset over health care, McCain compares Democrats to Bernie Madoff
Tempers are flying high over the successful health care cloture motion, and the reputedly hot-headed senator on Monday accused Democrats of engaging in a Madoff-like ploy to rip off the American people.
"It's one of a great Bernie Madoff gimmicks that anybody's ever seen," McCain said on ABC's Good Morning America. "Republicans were never brought in to the negotiations. This is what you get — a split country — when American people are opposed to what we're doing."
"That's nutty stuff," McCain added. "And by the way, it's unacceptable."
McCain, who was visibly angry late Sunday night on the Senate floor, said several times that the negotiations were one-sided. His colleagues agreed, but none of his them appear to have taken the accusation so far as to compare Democrats to the greatest financial swindler of all time.
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/mccain-compares-democrats-bernie-madoff/
Monday, December 21, 2009
I'm Really Pissed Off About Health Care Reform
I'm pissed off at health care reform. I'm pissed off at this endless process of emotional highs and lows and exhilaration and dejection and history and infamy.
I'm pissed off that President Obama "thanked" the independent senator from Connecticut even though the senator nearly killed health care reform this week.
To that point, I'm pissed off at Joe Lieberman. I'm pissed off at his childish, vengeful, opposite-day hackery. I'm pissed off at his giant pie-shaped head and his passive aggression. I'm pissed off that he enjoys government-run Medicare benefits while opposing government-run insurance for the rest of us.
I'm pissed off at the Senate. The whole Senate. The rules, the senators, the color of the walls, the fact that a doof like Chuck Grassley can actually be elected to it. Multiple times. I'm pissed off that even though we finally have a 60 seat supermajority, it's dysfunctional and Harry Reid is in charge of it. I'm pissed off that senators of both parties receive government-run primary care from the Office of the Attending Physician, while denying it to everyone else.
I'm pissed off at cable news and the establishment press for focusing more on The David Letterman & Tiger Woods Underpants Party than the substance of health care reform.
I'm pissed off at Rahm Emanuel and I'm pissed off at the "scary profane a-hole" mythology that's built up around him, and how he only seems to use his powers of intimidation to bully the left.
I'm pissed off at the Republicans. I'm pissed off at their ongoing self-contradictions and lies and bumper sticker sloganeering. I'm pissed off that around 55 Republicans are on Medicare, yet they oppose government-run health care for the rest of us.
I'm pissed off at Tom Coburn's bulbous Dirk Diggler haircut.
I'm pissed off at having to compromise while a handful of lopsidedly powerful conservadems get whatever they ask for.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/im-really-pissed-off-abou_b_394943.html
Scientists crack 'entire genetic code' of cancer
Professor Mike Stratton: "This is a fundamental moment in cancer research"
| By Michelle Roberts |
Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers - skin and lung - a move they say could revolutionise cancer care.
Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team.
Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer.
The UK is looking at breast cancer, Japan at liver and India at mouth.
China is studying stomach cancer, and the US is looking at cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas.
Dumbest business moments of the decade
1 of 10
Jan 10, 2000: You've got disaster!
AOL and Time Warner (Fortune's parent company) announced a $165 billion merger, promising to marry the best news and entertainment content with the distribution medium of the future, the Internet. To say it was a bad match is an exercise in understatement. In 2002, AOL Time Warner posted the largest-ever U.S. corporate loss as it wrote off most of the value of the merger. The next year, the company bid adieu to the managers who created it and stripped AOL from the corporate letterhead.
This month, Time Warner and AOL finally parted ways, nine years later and more than $100 billion poorer. So much for the deal Ted Turner once gushed was better than sex.
2 of 10
Jan 25, 2001: The Maestro's dubious debt warning
Just days after President George W. Bush took office, Fed chief Alan Greenspan admonished budgeteers about the dangers of -- get this -- too little federal debt."At zero debt, the continuing unified budget surpluses currently projected imply a major accumulation of private assets by the federal government," Greenspan told the Senate Budget Committee.
As it turns out, the United States has been able to kick its nasty surplus habit, spilling at least $158 billion of red ink every year since Greenspan's testimony. Yet thanks to the financial sector debt crisis that precipitated bailouts such as TARP, the feds ended up accumulating huge amounts of private assets anyway. We've got 7.7 billion shares of Citigroup -- any takers?
NEXT: July 19, 2002: WorldCom's bankruptcy
Weathering the storm of stupidity
By Gene Lyons
The spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought. --P.B. Medawar
So what's next? A series of essays by Sarah Palin about the Large Hadron Collider and the mysteries of dark matter? An MIT lecture series by Rush Limbaugh regarding the thermodynamics of black holes? A Festschrift of Sean Hannity's scholarly articles on plate tectonics and volcano formation? Glenn Beck performing live heart-lung transplants on Fox News?
Everybody understands that these things couldn't happen. That when it comes to serious scientific endeavor, years of study and professional apprenticeship are required. In a word, expertise.
Ex-beauty contestants, drive-time DJs, TV sports announcers, hairstylists, newspaper columnists -- basically anybody whose math skills topped out in the 10th grade -- rarely have anything substantive to add to the sum of technical and scientific knowledge. That's what they most resent about it.
It's not impossible that such persons could educate themselves sufficiently to have an informed opinion, but it's rare. Most of us, most of the time, are like historian and blogger Josh Marshall: "The fact that the vast majority of people with specialized knowledge in the field think there's a problem is good enough for me," he wrote. "I can't be knowledgeable about everything. And I'm comfortable with the modern system in which the opinions of really knowledgeable people with expertise counts more in cases like this than people who know nothing at all."
Unless and until, that is, scientific endeavor impinges upon either A) religious belief, or B) the ability of tycoons to keep making money in precisely the way they or their ancestors have always made their money. Then it's every man and woman a climatologist, and every genuine expert an "elitist" enemy of God and the American way -- creationism with a thermometer.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2009/12/16/stupidity/print.html
Marvel Universe President Obama versus Fox News President Obama – Who’s Worse?
by Avi Brand
The recent blockbuster news flash that Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 Billion made me wonder once again who is the worse President of the United States: Barack Obama as portrayed by the Marvel Universe, or Barack Obama as portrayed by Fox News. Well, I decided to stack them up head-to-head to settle the question once and for all.
The newly elected Marvel Universe Barack Obama made one of the most infamous cabinet appointments of all time, choosing Norman Osborn (formerly the murderous and insane Green Goblin) as head of all global peacekeeping agencies, including the revered Avengers. This version of Barack Obama has literally handed the reins of world peace and safety over to one of the most evil men on this or any other planet. Osborn has already clandestinely allied himself with Doctor Doom, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Loki the Norse God of Mischief, and the Criminal Syndicate Boss/Demon Sorcerer The Hood in an attempt to cement his power base and further extend his villainous tentacles into every corner of the Marvel Universe. Meanwhile, his agents are hunting down heroes like Tony Stark (Iron Man) and even Captain America, the very symbol of American power. And all with the Marvel Universe Obama's tacit approval. Makes Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers look like kindergartners.
The Fox News Barack Obama is a shady, smooth-talking totalitarian communist who is on an unholy mission to strengthen the federal government by any means necessary to a deadly sharp edge at home while systematically weakening our military oversees. His failed economic policies have destroyed this great country that we grew up in, and he will stop at nothing to blame America first for any problem anywhere in the world. Under his iron-fisted rule, the US will devolve into a Soviet-style, Nazi dictatorship that will enforce mandatory abortions on women, Koran classes on men, and euthanasia for old people. After barely seven months in office, he is already the worst president this nation has ever had. He is certainly the most anti-American. Makes Stalin and Hitler look like amateurs.
So who's worse?
Tom Friedman, museum exhibit
This might be one of the most self-contradictory episodes in the annals of American punditry:
Tom Friedman, The New York Times, yesterday:
A corrosive mind-set has taken hold since 9/11. It says that Arabs and Muslims are only objects, never responsible for anything in their world, and we are the only subjects, responsible for everything that happens in their world. We infantilize them.
Tom Friedman, over and over and over, for the last two weeks, on Afghanistan:
I feel like we're like an unemployed couple who just went out and decided to adopt a special needs baby.
The person who has spent weeks depicting Afghanistan as a "special needs baby" is now lecturing us about the "corrosive mind-set" of "infantilizing" Muslims. And the person who is now inveighing against seeing ourselves as "subjects" and Muslims as "objects" was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq on the ground that our invasion would "put Iraq on a more progressive path and stimulate some real change in an Arab world."
The "point" of Friedman's column yesterday is to call for a "civil war" in the Muslim world. Calling for wars is what Tom Friedman does most frequently. Today's not one of those days when I'm willing to wallow in the muck of his "argument," but Daniel Larison's superb response makes that unnecessary. Suffice to say: if I had to identify one fact that would illustrate for historians the rot and destructiveness of American political and media culture in this era, I would point to the fact that the trite, sociopathic, and grotesquely muddled mind of Tom Friedman is widely considered by political and media elites to be deeply Serious, profound and oozing great wisdom.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/17/freidman/index.html
Monday, December 14, 2009
Obama's Big Sellout
The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway
by Matt Taibbi
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.Then he got elected.
What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.
How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests who Obama really is?...
There's no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowedhis presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads.
Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different.
Obama as Poker Player Cover Story in the National Journal
Once and future NJ subscribers can click here:
Or click below to read (the full text from) an email that has been floated through the poker-political ether:
December 5, 2009
National Journal
Cover Story: When Is Obama Bluffing?
The President Approaches Issues with a Poker Player's Sensibility, Learned By Playing the Quintessentially American Game.
by Will Englund
High Stakes
An analysis of Obama's potential approach to four major issues.The Players:
Obama, Republicans, "Blue Dog" Democrats, liberal Democrats, insurance companies, hospitals, doctors
The Stakes:
Health care availability, the federal budget, political power
His opponents think they can drive Obama out of the tournament in this game.
Life is not a crapshoot. Politics is not chess. Character is not a round of golf.
If there is a single game that comes closest to recapitulating modern existence — that both mimics and informs the logic of a cluttered, challenging, bewilderingly complicated, less-than-all-knowing, partially comprehensible human society — it is poker, where quantitative analysis and calculated deception come together, and where skill wins out over luck in the long run, except that most people don't have the luxury of waiting until then.
President Obama calls himself a pretty good poker player, with skills honed back when he took part in a regular game in Springfield, Ill. The other players in that game — lobbyists and fellow members of the state Senate — describe him as a cautious participant: patient, conservative, patient, level-headed, patient, affable — and did we mention patient?
That game started more than a decade ago. Today, Obama confronts more-formidable foes, and for much bigger stakes. But in his first 10-plus months in office, he has approached the major issues facing his administration and the country with a poker player's sensibility. That doesn't mean that he necessarily has been dealt good hands. It doesn't even mean that he has always played his hands well. He hasn't. What he has done, though, is to make an effort to read his opponents, hold his own cards close, keep a straight face, and wait, calmly, for the winning play.
http://pokerati.com/2009/12/05/obama-as-a-poker-player-cover-story-in-the-national-journal/
Killer Earth
by
Peter Ward, a paleontologist at the University of Washington who specializes in mass extinctions, this year expressed a dimmer view of life on earth. He sees not a self-optimizing biosphere but a tangle of organisms that have evolved to starve their competitors and pollute their surroundings, behaving in ways that are "inherently selfish and ultimately biocidal." In his book "The Medea Hypothesis," named after the Greek mother who slaughtered her own children, Ward argues that for billions of years the biosphere has been its own worst enemy. "Life seems to be actively pursuing its own demise," he wrote recently in New Scientist, "moving earth ever closer to the inevitable day when it returns to its original state: sterile."
According to Ward, the mayhem started soon after the emergence of bacteria billions of years ago, which choked the earth's atmosphere first with a heat-reflecting haze of methane and then, a billion years later, with dangerous levels of oxygen, which at the time was toxic to life. Soon after, plants sucked up so much carbon that temperatures plummeted, creating a pair of deep ice ages. Of the five great extinctions since the rise of animals, Ward claims, four were caused not by volcanoes or by meteors but by life itself. To top it off, biomass has been declining for the last billion years.
After the current round of man-made global warming, both Ward and Lovelock predict that our descendants will eventually confront a long-term drop in carbon dioxide that threatens to wipe out all plant life within roughly a billion years. Grim as it may seem, a Medean perspective could help us avoid environmental guilt and nostalgia as we face these crises. "We must overcome nature," Ward writes, and later continues, "We do not want to go 'back to nature."'
Hanukkah Mix from the Idelsohn Society
My pal David Katznelson is co-founder of Idelsohn Society, a non-profit dedicated to the musicology of great old Jewish music. Indeed, it was named after Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, a musicologist who also wrote the classic tune "Hava Nagila." The Society reissues incredibly strange, offbeat, "space age," and fantastic vintage Jewish albums by the likes of Irving Fields, Gershon Kingsley, and The Barry Sisters. I have all of the releases and every one is absolutely fantastic. I can't recommend them enough. Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah, and in celebration David and his gang put together what is now my favorite Hanukkah compilation ever. Hit play below and head over to the Idelsohn Society to buy some CDs in support of the organization!
From the Idelsohn Society:
In honor of the holiday season, we are proud to offer this little mix of music culled from our various albums, archives and projects. There's plenty of choice old-school tracks mixed in with new school Idelsohn exclusives like the re-mix of the Yemenite Trio by Soulico's DJ Sabbo. Songs from Lionel Hampton and Marlena Shaw are just a taste of what's to come on our next release forthcoming in 2010, Black Sabbath, an homage to the musical history of Blacks and Jews. Of course, there's also a couple of classic Christmas anthems courtesy of that other tradition's most beloved holiday crooners, Barbra and Neil.Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation
Track list:
"The Problem"- Ray Brenner & Barry E. Blitzer
"White Christmas"-Barbra Streisand
"Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel"- Ella Jenkins
"Hava Nagila"- Lionel Hampton
"Mizrachi on the Drums (Sabbo Remix)"/"Seeing Israel"- The Yemenite Trio Vs. George Jessel
"Kale Kale"- Avram Grobard
"Holiday Mambo"- Machito & His Afro-Cubans
"They're Serving the Fish"- Benny Bell & The Brownsville Klezmers
"Blue"/"Santa Claus"- King Midas Sound vs. Ray Brenner & Barry E. Blitzer
"Where Can I Go?"- Marlena Shaw
"The Jewish Experience (MIS Remix)"/ "In The Beginning"- Gershon Kingsley vs. Charlton Heston
"Songs My Mother Loved"- Milton Berle
"That Old Black Magic"- Johnny Mathis
"Loco"- Don Tosti
"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"- Neil Diamond
"Hanukkah Dance"-Woody Guthrie
Marijuana's big fat zero
Of course most people know - or should know by now - that cannabis [the Evil Weed, Marijuana!] doesn't kill anybody. It is not carcinogenic and appears to be an untapped source of new medicines.
For those who ARE behind on their information about cannabis I point you to this pdf Congressional Research report on Medical Marijuana:Review and Analysis of Federal and State Policies
This is a special report produced for the US Congress on your tax dollar. This report is made available to all your legislators and this represents the information available to them. It is a little over 50 pages in length and is focused on medical marijuana policy, but the real value is in the details of the report which clearly show that cannabis is not remotely the health hazard or social disruption tobacco or alcohol - or other hard drugs - are.
If you read this report you will pretty much know what you need to know in order to talk about the topic of "marijuana" like a knowledgeable person and not sound like the clueless people who just regurgitate US Government propaganda.
There is a review of the history of cannabis prohibition, and an overview of actions taken to ease or end this extremely backwards situation. Tobacco and alcohol kill millions each year: cannabis kills nobody. Yet it is still severely illegal most places. Even in states like California, which has pioneered the end of cannabis prohibition, the US Federal government and numerous right-leaning private organization maintain an endless blitz of false information and scaremongering about the issue whilst the US DEA continues to raid medical marijuana growers and 'dispensaries' for lack of a better term for the places where folks can obtain legal medical cannabis.
A sharp turn toward another Vietnam
By George McGovern
As a U.S. senator during the 1960s, I agonized over the badly mistaken war in Vietnam. After doing all I could to save our troops and the Vietnamese people from a senseless conflict, I finally took my case to the public in my presidential campaign in 1972. Speaking across the nation, I told audiences that the only upside of the tragedy in Vietnam was that its enormous cost in lives and dollars would keep any future administration from going down that road again.
I was wrong. Today, I am astounded at the Obama administration's decision to escalate the equally mistaken war in Afghanistan, and as I listen to our talented young president explain why he is adding 30,000 troops -- beyond the 21,000 he had added already -- I can only think: another Vietnam. I hope I am incorrect, but history tells me otherwise.
RIAA, MPAA and US Chamber of Commerce declare war on blind and disabled people
Earlier this week, I told you about an open letter for writers in support of a treaty that would ensure that blind and disabled people all over the world would have legal protection when they converted books and other written matter to accessible format.
You'd think this would be a slam-dunk at the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization. Who could oppose non-profit blind/disabled groups helping disabled people get access to written work?
Well, The US Chamber of Commerce, the MPAA and the RIAA, that's who. All three organizations have urged the US trade delegation to oppose the treaty, because they fear it might set a precedent that users have rights to copyrighted works.
Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the BlindBut that prospect doesn't sit well with American business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest lobby representing 3 million businesses, argues that the plan being proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, "raises a number of serious concerns," (.pdf) chief among them the specter that the treaty would spawn a rash of internet book piracy.
The treaty also creates a bad precedent by loosening copyright restrictions, instead of tightening them as every previous copyright treaty has done, said Brad Huther, a chamber director. Huther concluded in a Dec. 2 letter to the U.S. Copyright office that the international community "should not engage in pursuing a copyright-exemption based paradigm."
Echoing that concern, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry of America told the Copyright Office last month that such a treaty would "begin to dismantle the existing global treaty structure of copyright law, through the adoption of an international instrument at odds with existing, longstanding and well-settled norms."
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