"Government can't do anything better than the Private Sector"

I hear this a hundred times a day, despite the fact that those who say this STILL have not managed to demonstrate to me when their semi-sacred Private Sector ever won a war, put men on the Moon, or built a highway system...
Well, here's ANOTHER fact for them to ignore -
Obama auto plan stopped global auto collapse from Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The global auto industry would have collapsed if the U.S. government had not provided taxpayer-backed financing for automakers General Motors and Chrysler, according to the chief executive officer of Motors Liquidation Co (MTLQQ.PK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

"If GM had gone down, the world's supply base would have gone down," said Al Koch, speaking at the Reuters Restructuring Summit in New York. Koch was GM's chief restructuring officer during the bankruptcy and now heads the GM unit that is being liquidated.

"There wouldn't have been a manufacturer that could have completed a car, because somewhere on the car there would be a part that needs to come from a supplier that had failed," he said.

"I'm not so sure that even Lexus (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) wouldn't have suffered," said Koch. "I think that every single manufacturer would have gone down, and the cascading unemployment from that would have been catastrophic."

Earlier this year, the U.S. government helped finance bankruptcies for GM and Chrysler CCMLPD.UL with $60 billion in taxpayer money. The funding helped support operations while the automakers slashed debt and other obligations while in Chapter 11 protection from creditors.

The companies emerged from bankruptcy through a sale process that transferred their best assets to new operating companies funded by the U.S. government while leaving liabilities, excess equipment and some shuttered industrial sites in companies set up as liquidators.

"I do believe that if President Obama hadn't done what he did for GM and Chrysler, that the world's auto industry would have collapsed and I believe we would have been in the middle of a worldwide depression," Koch said.

(Reporting by Chelsea Emery; Editing by Gary Hill)

A pity for Conservatives that reality has such a strong liberal bias...

So let me get this straight...

Christians are feeling PERSECUTED? We're 70% of the freaking US population, and we're PERSECUTED? Gimme a frickin' break!
And all this comes from the recent hate crimes legislation passed by Congress. It has spawned a new wave of irrationality from the religious right, fearing it's an assault on freedom of religion.

My views on this were well summed up by Nance Greggs on Democratic Underground:

A rightwing acquaintance recently sent an email with a link to the following, “Christians on high alert over hate crimes passage”, adding the query “Is this one more nail in the coffin of Christianity?”

Well, the answer is yes and no, depending on what kind of “Christian” one is these days.

The first line of the linked article – “A hate crimes bill sent to President Obama for his signature raised a red flag for Christians” – sadly, and oh-so-ironically, speaks for itself.

For those of us raised as Christians back in the day, it would seem that enacting laws that prosecute and punish the propagation of hate towards one’s fellow citizens, hopefully reducing same in consideration of the consequences thereof, would be right in keeping with Christian values and the promotion of increased civility and understanding among us.

But that was, as I’ve said, back in the day – before the new, improved, narrow-minded, homo-hating, sword-wielding, the-end-justifies-the-means Jesus hit the shelves, currently being marketed at a pulpit in your area (action accessories, e.g. “Jesus hates Faggots” placards, home addresses of abortion providers, etc., sold separately).

“On Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed a hate crimes bill that Christian leaders have warned for years could greatly infringe on the rights of those who speak to loudly about their religious views. Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel agrees with most observers that President Obama will sign the measure -- adding that the president desires to "throw a bone to homosexual activists because they have been breathing down his neck...and this is a way to hold them off."

Ah, yes – the “homosexual activists”, those nasty immoral people who Jesus railed against continually. One need only look to the New Testament to read quote after quote by the Prince of Peace himself to know that – oh, that’s right. He was completely silent on the topic. I guess he had more important things on his mind. There’s also the fact that Jesus’ dad left any mention of “thou shalt not” out of the Ten Big Ones when it came to homosexuality – and bein’ God and all, one would imagine he could have gone with Eleven Commandments if he’d been of a mind to. (Hey, it’s not like He couldn’t foresee a problem, if He thought one existed).

As for the statement that Mr. Barber “agrees with most observers” – who are said “observers”, and what are their names? Inquiring minds really DO want to know these days.

“Barber views the legislation as something akin to a muzzle. ‘Unfortunately, it places Christians – people of faith, people who have traditional values relative to sexual immorality – in an untenable position,’ says the attorney.

Yes, the position IS untenable – if you’re taking the position that spewing hate is part and parcel of Christianity, and shouldn’t be “muzzled”. That would appear to be, on its face, as untenable as it gets.

If modern-day followers of the New Improved Jesus see anti-hate-crime legislation as being somehow anti-Christian, one has to ask exactly what it is they are seeking to “protect” as their God-given right (pun definitely intended) to say, do and promote as part of “free speech” or “freedom of religion”.

It would seem that speaking to “traditional Christian values” would include the oldies-but-goodies – like being thy brother’s keeper, tending to the sick and homeless in His name, treating the least among us as we ourselves would hope to be treated – and wouldn’t be subject to, by any stretch of the imagination, being “muzzled” by government fiat.

But this, of course, is the underlying problem. The current crop of hypocrites behind the New Improved Jesus movement know that what they seek to be exempt from prosecution for is becoming more and more blatantly a matter of hatred disguised as moral rectitude; what is being sought to be “protected” is not the right to speak freely, but the right to hide behind religion while spewing intolerance against those who refuse to conform to the New Fangled Christianity being espoused by those who want to hold on to their prejudices and still be recognized as part of the flock.

“Barber explains that Liberty Counsel intends to challenge the constitutionality of the hate crimes legislation.”

Well, you do that, Mr. Barber. I wouldn’t want to think you and your ilk are wasting time challenging the constitutionality of torture, or the involvement the past administration in war crimes, or the moral reprehensibility of withholding medical care from those who can’t afford it – things that the Old Time Jesus would, no doubt, have had something to say about were he still here.

Apparently Mr. Barber thinks that the lefties, the progressives, the Democrats, are too wacky to know the difference between the freedom to publicly acknowledge one’s religious beliefs and hate speech – which is pretty rich considering the out-and-out wackiness of the “religious right” we, as a nation, have had to endure for far too long.

I have no doubt that if the speech and/or actions Mr. Barber fears will fall squarely under the grounds of a hate crime under the new legislation included loving one's neighbor as one's self, he'd have a legitimate argument. But it doesn't, and he doesn't, and there you have it, plain and simple.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for spewing hatred and intolerance in the Lord’s name – for they shall inherit the Earth.”

I don’t actually recall that as being one of the Beatitudes – but it’s a whole new world under the New Improved Jesus.

I just wish the Old Jesus was still in vogue. He was someone worth meeting, getting to know - too bad Mr. Barber never had the pleasure.

Oh my LORD, no...

This is a slideshow on HuffingtonPost for the most inappropriate Halloween costumes. Some of the adult costumes put me in mind of something an Air Force buddy once told me:
"The things you see when you don't have a gun..."

A new, unexpected player in the healthcare battle:

Consumers Union, publisher of the popular magazine "Consumer Reports", has jumped into the battle for health care reform with an ad BACKING Obama's plan.

Said President Jim Guest: "You may wonder why we are injecting ourselves so publicly into a heated debate that has generated an enormous amount of concern and confusion... We are in the business of providing information and advice that helps consumers. We don't make campaign contributions. We don't endorse candidates. And we don't care who gets the credit for fixing the problems with health care -- we just need them fixed. Doing nothing about health care is not a solution."

(video at link)

The next Billy Joel...?

My 7-YO son Colin at his recital this past Saturday night. ALL the kids studying under this music teacher performed - some were quite good! After Colin got done "freelancing" (which had me tearing out what's left of my hair), he got down to business:
I have NO idea where this "hamminess" of his comes from... ;-D Check out the FULL "performance" on YouTube... (link when my wife gets to uploading it...)

On edit: My wife WUSSED! she, too, cut out the free-lance portion...but it's here.

On FURTHER edit(9/25/09): She un-wussed. You can see the free-lance portion here.

The evidence against ACORN is overwhelming...

This is from my friend "Grantcart" at Democratic Underground:

Its a little long but the evidence against ACORN requires it.

First let us establish the point of context.

What is fraud in the context of the federal government?

Well sitting in CA 49 we consider ourselves something of experts on fraud. When we find somebody that is really good on the subject we send them to Congress.


First we sent Duke Cunningham to represent us but Duke being somewhat stupid didn't set up a finance committee and pay his wife $ 250,000 a year to run his shakedown, he met government contractors in restaurants and actually wrote down how much his commission would be for each contract he could get. Then he kept the notes.

Second we then sent Brian Bilbray. He became Mayor of Imperial Beach. He has never lived in this district but being the aficionados of fraud that we are we sent him to Congress anyway.

Now fraud, criminal enterprise and personal debauchery have not been isolated in CA 49 it has spread evenly throughout the US, we just have a predilection of not beating around the bush when it comes to our Congressman. We put it up there for everyone to see.

Before we get to the evidence against ACORN we have to say that we see that serious crimes have become common even among our clergy, corporations and communities. Now we didn't send cameras into all of those Catholic and Evangelical Churches to get them to do pedophilia or sleep with prostitutes, these are crimes that became so endemic that they became virtual class action lawsuits.

We have Governors hiring prostitutes and using state money for overseas affairs, Senators having sex in public bathrooms and well we don't have time to continue with all of their crimes. Now we didn't have cameraman punk all of these people, their misbehavior became concrete because well it became public.

Now when it comes to working with the federal government it is critical that sub contractors work to a higher standard than that of our Congressman and Senators (who are all involved in legal bribery), our clergy, our community leaders. They should also work to a higher standard than the government itself. Every branch of the government has had corruption in the form of embezzlement or other abuse. The CIA, FBI, each branch of the service, and so on.

We are currently involved in a great debate about what to do about Health Care. This is an industry that is basically involved in a criminal enterprise to sign contracts and then find frivolous means to back out of claims. The first step of the reform process should have started with empaneling a grand jury.

But when you are a sub contractor working for the federal government you must work to a higher standard than all of these.

Take for existence the record of General Electric in working as a sub contractor for the United States Government

A Brief List of criminal, civil, political and ethical transgressions

1949 General Electric deliberately released radioactive material to see how far downwind it would travel.

1986 the United States and General Electric had conducted experiments on hundreds of United States citizens. One of GE’s most gruesome experiments — disclosed in the Markey hearings — was performed on inmates at a prison in Walla Walla, Washington, near Hanford. Starting in 1963, 64 prisoners had their scrotums and testes irradiated to determine the effects of radiation on human reproductive organs.

GE is wholly or partially liable for at least 78 federal Superfund sites.

+ On September 29, 1998, General Electric agreed to a $200 million settlement in principle of environmental claims resulting from pollution of the Housatonic River and other areas by chemical releases from GE’s plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The claims result from a long history of GE’s use and disposal of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other hazardous substances at the plant, which GE no longer uses for manufacturing.

+ On March 26, 1998, General Electric agreed to pay a $92,000 fine for previous violations of environmental reporting requirements for toxic releases at its silicone manufacturing plant in Waterford, New York,

+ On September 15, 1995, General Electric agreed to pay $137,000 in fines and expenses and to clean up a hazardous waste dump at a former plant where it repaired and rebuilt transformers.

+ October 1993, investigators swooped down on the GE Apparatus Service Center in Brandon, Florida with search warrants to take soil samples and confiscate computer records and files. Inspectors found 30 violations,
GE closed the facility in December 1993.

+ On March 13, 1992, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a $20,000 fine against General Electric for violations of regulations at the fuel fabrication plant in Wilmington, North Carolina.

+On May 29, 1991, GE personnel accidentally moved about 320 pounds of uranium to a waste treatment tank. The danger of the mistake was that the size and shape of the waste container caused unsafe concentrations of uranium, which could have led to a nuclear accident. The NRC dispatched a special incident investigation team the same day and an inspection began two days later. The NRC found that the mistake was the result of lax safety controls.

+At an April 22, 1998 shareholder meeting, GE CEO Jack Welch claimed: “PCBs do not pose adverse health risks.” Testifying in Albany on July 9, 1998, EPA Administrator Carol Browner stated: “GE tells us this contamination is not a problem. GE would have people of the Hudson River believe, and I quote: ‘living in a PCB-laden area is not dangerous.’ But the science tells us the opposite is true ... And concern about PCBs goes beyond cancer ... The science has spoken: PCBs are a serious threat...”

Defense Contracting Fraud

+ On July 23, 1992, GE pled guilty in federal court to civil and criminal charges of defrauding the Pentagon and agreed to pay $69 million to the U.S. government in fines — one of the largest defense contracting fines ever.
General Electric said in a statement that it took responsibility for the actions of a former marketing employee who, along with an Israeli Air Force General, diverted Pentagon funds to their own bank accounts and to fund Israeli military programs not authorized by the United States.Under the settlement with the Justice Department over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, GE paid $59.5 million in civil fraud claims and $9.5 million in criminal fines.


+ GE is a repeat offender when it comes to Defense Department fraud. The company has repeatedly violated the False Claims Act — a measure originally proposed by Lincoln to protect federal coffers. When the Project on Government Oversight surveyed defense contractors, it found that General Electric was responsible for 15 instances of fraudulent activity in just a four year period (1990-1994) — more than any other defense contractor. GE:

1. Paid $7.1 million to settle a qui tam suit alleging that the company failed to satisfy electrical bonding requirements for its jet engine contracts, thereby creating a safety risk.
2. Paid $5.87 million (along with Martin Marietta) to settle a qui tam suit associated with improper sales of radar systems to Egypt.
3. Paid fines between 1990 and 1994 ranging from a $20,000 criminal fine to a $24.6 million civil fine for a variety of defense contracting frauds, including: misrepresentation, money laundering, defective pricing (2 incidents), cost mischarging (3 incidents), false claims, product substitution, conspiracy/conversion of classified documents, procurement fraud and mail fraud.
4. Was convicted on February 3, 1990 in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia of defrauding the government out of $10 million for a battlefield computer system.
5. Pled guilty on May 19, 1985 to charges of fraud and falsifying 108 claims on a missile contract.
6. Was convicted of defrauding the Air Force out of $800,000 on the Minuteman Missile Project.
7. Was convicted of bribing the Puerto Rico Water Resources Authority.
artial rebates to buy new GE dishwashers.

Recidivistic GE
What distinguishes General Electric is not merely the number of crimes committed — or the dollar amount of the crimes — but a consistent pattern of violating criminal and civil laws over many years.

Exacerbating the situation, General Electric has been a leader in using political influence to attempt to overturn the environmental and defense contracting laws that it persistently violates.

excerpts taken from http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/01july-august/julyaug01corp4.html.

Now, despite this record of continual fraud by General Electric no one has ever called for the Federal Government to stop contracting with General Electric.

Again these are crimes that became evident. No one went into General Electric with a camera and tried to see what crimes a local manager might do.

And now we come to the case of ACORN.

The evidence is overwhelming.

Now it is clear that when it comes to the question of voter fraud all of the charges against them have proven baseless. Irregularities with either silly or fictional voter registration is marked by ACORN and submitted to voter registrars as required by law.

Surprisingly, despite all of the efforts by FOX to undermine the election with baseless charges of election fraud, not a single case of voter fraud has been substantiated.

So now FOX has cooperated with provacateurs to go into dozens of ACORN offices and see if they can't get people to take some stupid bait and get involved in improper actions.

And now the call goes out to "defund ACORN". Every organization in or out of the government has had some malfeasance. Even the Church is filled with it.

And yet only ACORN is expected not simply to identify wrong doers and implement corrective systems; they are to be wiped out of existence.

Now what is the evidence against ACORN? What is the essential element that makes them unique that they must be exterminated. Are they more corrupt than General Electric?

No. The evidence of ACORN is that they are there to help poor people. They are there to advance social justice.

Listen to 30 seconds of this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGFXzPNtH3g

The Fox Host asks the undercover reporter "You're not a pimp; you're just playing one on our show, and you played it on those tapes"

Reporter's response "I AM ONE OF THE WHITEST GUYS EVER"

ACORN's crime is that they work with the poor and minorities and so because of that "crime" they will be treated differently than every other contractor who has ever done business with the government and had some of its employees act improperly.

Poor people aren't stupid, or more inclined to impropriety, or more filled with hatred.

Poor people are simply poor. And shame on this country that it has no moral ambition to face its poor, embrace them and find ways to end their poverty. We would rather send rich kids in to see if we can't find some to be ridiculous and then hold up the people who work with the poor to public ridicule.

Where are their defenders?

This from a Retired General

...in today's Ft. Worth Star-Telegram:

By BUD KENNEDY

bud@star-telegram.com

A retired Air National Guard general called Thursday with three worries.

"Something bad’s gone wrong in this country," said retired Brig. Gen. Tom Daniels, 62, of Fort Worth.

"Something’s wrong in Arlington. Something’s wrong in Austin. And something’s wrong in America."

He flew missions in Vietnam. In the Pentagon, he served proudly under President George H.W. Bush — "whom I loved," he added.

"Now our country chooses a black man as president — and suddenly, the governor is talking about secession? And Arlington is boycotting the president? They won’t even let children see him in school?"

Eight years removed from 9-11, Daniels feels a chill.

"Look how united we were!" he said in his booming command voice. "Now — look how we’ve squandered it!"

He didn’t even have to mention U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson:

"We’re hollering at each other now," Daniels said. "We hate each other."

And he sees that as dividing our heroes in uniform.

"I talk to military guys all over the world — white, black, brown," he said. "They’re asking, 'If it was unpatriotic to talk this way about the last president, isn’t this unpatriotic?’ They’re concerned. This is nothing but open, unabated racism. Nobody’s saying that."

I know what some of you are going to say. It’s political, not racial.

But I also can’t imagine people acting this way over, say, a President Harry Reid or even President Al Gore.

"All I know is, the black guy wins, and suddenly these nuts are out there on TV and radio preaching to long-haul truck drivers all over the country," Daniels said.

"Somebody needs to start talking back. Where are the moderates in the Republican Party? Where are the people like George [H.W.] Bush who made sense? They’re letting the nuts lead them around by the nose."

He is particularly steamed that Arlington schools still refuse to replay Obama’s address to schoolchildren yet will bus fifth-graders to hear George W. Bush on Sept. 21 at a Super Bowl event at Cowboys Stadium. "I’ve always called Arlington a true all-American city," he said. "I love the parks. I love how they stuck their neck out to get baseball and football."

He lives near the Arlington border and shops in the city.

"But now they’re one of the few cities in America boycotting the president’s speech? That’s wrong."

Daniels reserved special vitriol for Gov. Rick Perry.

"He’s Air Force. He should be ashamed," Daniels said. "I’m ashamed of him." Perry "should know better" than to float talk about Texas leaving the U.S., Daniels said.

"Even for a campaign, it’s the wrong thing to talk about," he said. "That’s not our Texas. We love our country. We’re not going anywhere. We don’t believe in secession."

He had one final question.

"When is somebody in Arlington or Austin going to stand up to these people?"

It’s his mission.

Joe Wilson (R-SC) - our shouter at the health care speech last night...

Joe Wilson's Dirty Health-Care Secret
Newsweek

By Adam Weinstein


Poor Joe Wilson. The conservative Republican representative from South Carolina stepped in it Wednesday night when he broke with centuries of decorum by screaming, "You lie!" at President Obama during his health-care speech to a joint session of Congress.

Cut the man some slack. He's passionate! I know this because he told me, in the sole message that blazes across his campaign Web site: JOE WILSON IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!

Except that he's not─at least not when it comes to his, and his family's, government-run health care. As a retired Army National Guard colonel, Wilson gets a lot of benefits (one of which, apparently, was not a full appreciation of the customs, traditions, and courtesies that mandate respect for one's commander in chief). And with four sons in the armed services, the entire Wilson brood has enjoyed multiple generations of free military medical coverage, known as TRICARE.

Yes, it's true. As politicos and town-hall criers debate the finer points of the public option, employer mandates, coverage for undocumented immigrants, and who's more Hitler-like, they seem to miss a larger point: the United States has single-payer health care. It covers 9.5 million active-duty servicemen and women, military retirees, and their dependents─including almost a 10th of all Californians and Floridians, and nearly a quarter of a million residents of Wilson's home state.

Military beneficiaries like Wilson who, as a retiree, is eligible for lifetime coverage─never have to worry about an eye exam, a CT scan, a prolonged labor, or an open-heart surgery. They have access not only to the military's 133,500 uniformed health professionals, but cooperating private doctors as well─whose fees are paid by the Department of Defense. It's high-quality care, too: surveys from 2007 and 2008 list TRICARE among "the best health insurer(s) in the nation" by customer satisfaction. Yet Wilson insists government-run health care is a problem.

To be fair, Wilson has been consistent in his policymaking if not his personal life: according to his last congressional opponent, Wilson voted 11 times against health care for veterans in eight years, even as he voted "aye" for the Iraq War (during the debate on the war vote, he even called one Democrat "viscerally anti-American"─several times). He voted to cut veterans' benefits─not his own─to make room for President George W. Bush's tax cuts. He repeatedly voted for budgets that slashed funding to the Veterans Administration and TRICARE. And perhaps most bizarrely, he refused─repeatedly─to approve Democratic-led initiatives that would have extended TRICARE coverage to all reservists and National Guard members, even though a disproportionate number of them have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan─and many lost access to their civilian work benefits when they did so.

There's one other notable exception to Wilson's tough-on-government record: In July, when the health-insurance debate just started heating up, he offered an amendment that would exempt TRICARE from any system of employer mandates in a health-care bill. It's not clear whether this is necessary, since most such bills in Congress keep government benefits exempt from the rules as a matter of course. But Wilson took the opportunity to make his stand.

"As a 31-year Army Guard and Reserve veteran, I know the importance of TRICARE," he said in a press release. "The number of individuals who choose to enroll in TRICARE continues to rise because TRICARE is a low cost, comprehensive health plan that is portable and available in some form world-wide." He went on to call TRICARE "world class health care," concluding on a personal note. "I am grateful to have four sons now serving in the military, and I know that their families appreciate the availability of TRICARE," he said.

What does that mean? Nothing except that Joe Wilson was against government-run health care before he was for it. And now he's against it again. Just not when it comes to his own flesh and blood.

Well, I like THIS...

You can see it, and the comments it's generated, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGC1mCS4OVo

So, the banks are getting our money at 0%, and then turning around and charging us 30%?!? WTF?

"Republicans Get Rolled...And Deservedly So"

This is from Conservative talker/blogger Neal Boortz:

Today at noon Barack Obama addresses the nation’s schoolchildren .. or a good number of them anyway. Many students won’t hear the speech because of a rather severe miscalculation from the right. Republican screaming and wailing made it sound as if Hugo Chavez was flying in via Aeroflot to speak to our poor, innocent, unsuspecting angels. School districts reacted … and millions of school kids will sit around picking their noses at noon instead of watching the speech.

So now the speech is out. As of yesterday afternoon you could read it on the Internet. I’ve read it, and if there is anything in there that I wouldn’t want my child to have heard from a U.S. President, I certainly couldn’t find it.

Egad! The speech is innocuous! What are we going to do now? I know! We’ll all claim that Obama changed the speech after the uproar from the right! Well, duhhhhhh. Of course he did! Why wouldn’t he! Well, actually he really didn’t have to change it. It probably wasn’t written by the time conservative boxers bunched up en masse. So Obama’s speechwriters took their cue from the right and made the speech essentially bulletproof from the get-go. One sharp mind in a Republican strategy session could have seen this one coming from the next galaxy.

President says he will give speech to schoolchildren.

Republicans say the speech will be full of leftist propaganda

Parents run in circles flailing arms overhead while screaming and shouting.

Some school officials black out Obama’s speech. (racist comment)

Grinning speechwriters prepare speech with no leftist propaganda.

Republicans look like fools.

People now more reluctant to listen to conservative complaints about Obama.





Now how easy was that? For about three days we have parents, the Republican Party and assorted odds spinning around on their eyebrows and spitting wooden nickels over Obama’s speech. He’s going to indoctrinate our children. He’s going to fill them full of socialist ideology. They’re all going to come away from school today singing Kumbaya and waving red flags. They’ll probably stop on the way home from school to buy a Che Guevara t-shirt from vendors the Democrats will have waiting out in front of their schools. Then the hopelessly indoctrinated kids will come home and destroy all the incandescent light bulbs and turn the spare bathtub into a recycling bin. Before they do their homework (reading The Communist Manifesto) they’ll hide the car keys so daddy has to take mass transportation to work on Wednesday.

TeamObama must have loved this one. Talk about a hanging curveball. Once the manic inanity started all they had to do is sit back, prepare an innocuous speech for The One, and let the people scratch their heads wondering what in the hell the Republicans were so upset about! Now the next time the right comes up with an objection to some Obama concept, people who last week might have been on board will stand back and look at the Republicans with a jaundiced eye.

This one was so easy for the left I can’t even think of another 300 words to fill out this column. So just move on to the next one. Two steps forward and three steps back. Unless PrezBO really messes up his address to Congress tonight watch for his popularity ratings to rise. Thanks, Republicans! See if there’s some drug available for that rectal-cranial inversion you’re suffering from.

This pretty well sums it up for me...

From today's Ft. Worth (TX) Star-Telegram:

Reaction to Obama’s school speech is tragic, sinister and sickening
By BOB RAY SANDERS

Parents are talking about keeping their kids home from school this week.

Some so-called leaders are expressing grave concern "for the children" in fear of an impending disaster.

And the provocateurs who commandeer broadcast microphones on a daily basis continue to warn of a serious contagion that the nation must fight "by any means necessary."

I could understand it if these folk were worried about the H1N1 ("swine flu") virus, but that’s not their concern.

The infection they are afraid of is the president of the United States and his possible influence on America’s children.

In an age when schools are wired with the latest technology, and a young, confident president knows how to use it, the White House thought it a good idea for Barack Obama to address the nation’s youth. His Tuesday speech can be viewed live in the classroom or recorded and used later.

Many parents have balked at that idea and have put pressure on school administrators not to show the speech or use its proposed accompanying lesson plans. Area districts are handling the matter in different ways: some leaving it up to individual teachers, some taping it to be used on request by students or instructors and at least one that will make it available for parents’ use to decide if their youngsters should view it.

It wouldn’t be the first time a president has tried to inspire young people to think, to talk and to act. John Kennedy did it, as did Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Who can be a more persuasive role model for students to stay in school or commit to serving their country than the person who holds the highest office in the land?

Unfortunately for a growing number of frightened, misguided and hate-filled Americans, this president should not and must not be a role model for their children. Therefore, their young sons and daughters should not be in class — or perhaps even in school — if there’s a remote possibility that the plague-spreading left-wing devil called Obama will speak to them.

They’ve labeled him the Antichrist who is set on desecrating the Constitution, destroying the country and annihilating their children’s futures.

It is theater of the absurd, being played out in exaggerated dramatic fashion on stages large and small — in offices, backrooms, broadcast studios and on the World Wide Web.

I would find it laughable if it were not so tragic, so sinister and so sickening.

People who consider themselves intelligent, patriotic and religious have bought into this pathetic self-serving campaign to oppose Obama at every turn by plotting against any initiative he offers and continuously praying for his failure even if it would mean the downfall of their own country.

While I understand mean-spirited, partisan adults exhibiting such behavior, I can’t comprehend why anyone would want to pass along such disrespectful and vitriolic traits to their children.

In an opinion column submitted to various media last week, a former Reagan administration official found it ridiculous that the lesson plan submitted for use by teachers with the Obama speech suggested discussing things like, "Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of Congress or the governor? Why is what they say important?"

Peggy Venable, now Texas director for a group called Americans for Prosperity, said, "That’s enough to send chills down my spine. Schoolchildren should not be indoctrinated in obedience to and service in support of the president of the United States."

The former White House liaison for the U.S. Department of Education went on to object to an earlier plan that students be encouraged to write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.

"It appears to be nothing short of training our children to support Obama policies," she said. "When the recruits are children, doesn’t that constitute indoctrination, even brainwashing?"

Such critics give teachers and students, including their own, very little credit for being able to think and intelligently debate the issues of the day.

Students throughout the nation have been writing the White House for months in efforts to express their concerns to Obama. Hundreds of thousands of them already are engaged in communication with the president. That is a very healthy and encouraging sign — and a great educational experience.

It is too bad that those caught up in what they regard as a socialist conspiracy to destroy our democratic society are infecting their children with the disease of intolerance.

And believe me, just like the swine flu, intolerance is contagious.

Oh, give me a BREAK...

So now, the right is up in arms over Obama giving an address to schoolkids?!?
OK, Rant ON:

Can they get ANY stupider?
This is nothing more than over-the-top, pathetic hysteria. These people DESPERATELY need to reintroduce themselves to reality. They had no trouble with GWB reading to schoolkids, as he was doing on 9/11, Nor with Bush 41 speaking to schoolkids in
1991, but now that a DEMOCRAT is President - hoo boy! INDOCTRINATION! SOCIALISM! Apparently, according to these brain-dead fools, talking to schoolkids is BAD - unless a Republican does it. Give me a flippin' break!

GET. A. GRIP.

If you are one of those comparing Obama to Hitler - You are an IDIOT.
If you think Obama is socialist or marxist - get a dictionary, because you obviously have NO CLUE what the words you're using mean - AND you're an IDIOT.

Why in hell don't they just come out and say what they REALLY think - that they can't stand the idea that a Black man got elected President, and that all this socialist/marxist/radical Muslim/indoctrination BS is nothing more than "Mommy! Mommy! Make the scary Black man go AWAY!"
Effing IDIOTS.
Rant OFF.

A new medication

for those of us who LIKE Obama's health care plan...

One Republican's view on health care reform...

This poor guy's gonna get run out of the party on a rail - he makes FAR too much sense.
From last Saturday's Augusta (GA) Ledger-Enquirer:

Beware health-industrial complex

By Jack Bernard
Ledger-Enquirer
August 23, 2009

I am a Republican, former chairman of the Republican Party in Jasper County, Ga., and chair of that county commission.

In my view, it is unpatriotic to continue to lie to the American public about the situation facing us. Over the last 10 years, wages have gone up by about one-fourth. Health insurance premiums have gone up well over 100 percent. We cannot continue along this path to fiscal destruction. Inaction is not an option.

It is also against American values to mislead the public into believing that everyone can get good care even if they do not have insurance. The mark of a great nation is not how well it treats its privileged, but rather how well it treats its downtrodden. On this measure, we fail miserably; strange for a nation that prides itself on being the most religious democracy in the world. Where in the Bible did Jesus say “might makes right” or “those with the gold rule”?

Very few health or insurance professionals advocate for a single-payer system, the best way to control costs and ensure access. I hear all sorts of reasons: rationing (really, like HMOs do not do that now), paperwork (apparently insurance company bureaucracy does not count), socialism (come on — practitioners will still be independent and we all know it) and so forth. It is rare that we hear the underlying cause openly stated: greed. It will cut my income.

The members of Physicians for a National Health Plan are an exception to this rule. If you take a look at their Web site, www.pnhp.org, the rationale for a single-payer system is clearly articulated.

The French have the top system in the world, with something like Medicare covering 66 percent of costs and private insurance for the rest, yet their cost per capita is half of ours. Universal Medicare will both control costs and achieve universal access to high quality care. Congressmen would get the same insurance as you and I. You better believe your coverage would be just as good as or better than what you are getting now.

The problem is not technical; it is political. It is high time we put the country ahead of ourselves and establish a single-payer system.

Jack Bernard is CEO of Monticello (Ga.) Health Care Solutions and a former chairman of the Jasper County Commission and the Jasper County Republican Party.

Anybody ELSE wanna say the bank bailouts were wasted money?

How much you wanna bet that the mainstream media totally ignores this?

LONDON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve has made $14 billion in profits on loans made in the last two years, The Financial Times reported on Monday, citing officials close to the matter.

The U.S. central bank also earned about $19 billion from interest and fees charged to institutions that tapped liquidity facilities during the global financial crisis, the report said.

If the Fed had invested the same amounted loaned out in three-month Treasury bills since August 2007, it would have earned $5 billion in interest, the FT said.

This estimate excludes company bailouts and purchases of long-term assets as well as unrealized gains or losses on the Fed's portfolio of mortgage-backed securities and Treasuries purchased as part of the $1.75 trillion asset purchase program.

The Fed was not immediately available for comment on the report.

A brief, documented history...

Of Right-wing ignorance:

What I want to know...

is, what is the REPUBLICAN healthcare plan? For weeks and months, all I've heard is their criticism of the Democratic plans. "They are socialistic." "They cost too much." "They are going to pull the plug on Grandma", and so on. Now, I want to hear what their plan is to fix healthcare in this country.

What do they say about universal coverage? Do they think every American should be able to afford going to a doctor if they get sick?

What do they say about portability? If you lose or leave your job, do they believe you should be able to take your coverage with you to your next job?

What about costs? Are they satisfied with 10% increases or more every year in health insurance costs? How do they plan to bring it down other than by "tort reform"? Those lawyers support Democrats, don't you know?

What about pre-existing conditions? Do they have a plan where someone with a pre-existing condition cannot be denied coverage by insurance companies? Also, do they have a plan where they are not priced out of the market?

What about a public option? How do they plan on creating competition? Do they think letting insurance companies compete across state lines will open up competition? Are they willing to open insurance companies up to trust and monopoly violations? Are they willing to put regulations on big insurance companies?

I want to hear the media challenge them just the way they have challenged the Democrats. I'm going to enjoy that - especially since the GOP had 8 YEARS to come up with a plan, and did NOTHING.

With all the cries of "Socialism" going about...

I thought I'd compose a handy guide for Conservatives:

So, you say you don't like socialism? You don't want the government running anything? Wellll....

Don't EVER say you honor and support our military. The military (even including private, outsourced companies like Blackwater) are all paid and supplied by the Federal government.

Don't EVER call 911 for a medical, fire or police emergency. Emergency services are largely provided for by public servants using government-provided equipment and training.

Don't EVER drive on a federal or state or local highway. You can only drive on roads built and maintained by private companies. You'll really have to do this as you will not have a driver's license which is a product of a government agency.

Don't EVER buy any food that passed an FDA inspection. You have to grow your own fruits and vegetables and raise your own cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. Same goes for any medications.

Don't EVER visit a National, State, or Local park and especially don't participate in any activities there (fishing, hunting, camping, hiking, etc. that would require further expenditures for licenses.)

Don't EVER be in a position you would need a public defender. They are paid for via public dollars.

Don't EVER expect or ask for the prosecution against someone who did you harm, directly or indirectly. The judicial system, you see, is a government-run agency paid for by our tax dollars and other fees.

Don't EVER visit a public library and use the resources there as tax dollars bought those books, PCs, etc.

Don't EVER put your children in public schools (elementary, high school, or college). The elementary and high schools are free via tax dollars. Teachers are paid via tax dollars.

Don't EVER apply for Medicaid if you become disabled or indigent and need assistance such as food stamps, medical care, utility bill assistance or job training. After all, you don't want other Americans who have no insurance to have it paid for via tax dollars, why should you get to take part in that system?

Don't EVER accept Medicare after you retire and no longer have any type of private health insurance.

Don't EVER accept any Social Security payment after you no longer work or a spouse has died. Live off of your private investments or the charity of friends and family.

Don't EVER apply for a small business loan from any government agency. Where do you think that money would come from anyway?

Don't EVER ask the government for help in getting child support payments from a deadbeat spouse.

Don't EVER apply for Unemployment if you should happen to lose your job.

Don't EVER mail a letter via the USPS and contact every single entity that would otherwise use the USPS for mailing you items to have them sent via UPS, FEDEX, or electronic delivery.

Don't EVER visit a museum that was built or is maintained or operated by any government agency.


Got that?

Now HERE'S some talent...

Something non-political, for once! :-)
This is Ryan's friend Michael playing Beethoven's "Fur Elise". Bear in mind - Michael is 9 years old.


If you're getting this by e-mail, come to the blog to see the video - this kid's something else!

What happens if Health Care Reform fails...

as Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, et. al. seem to want? Here's Uwe Reinhardt's take on it.

So who is Uwe Reinhardt, and why should you care what he says about this?
Uwe Reinhardt is James Madison professor of political economy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. From 1986 to 1995 he served as a commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Committee, established in 1986 by Congress to advise it on issues related to the payment of physicians.


Uwe Reinhardt says health costs are rising at unsustainable pace, gobbling up middle-class incomes.

(CNN) -- Watching the angry outbursts at town hall meetings on health reform and the continuing public ambivalence about current efforts to reform our health system almost makes me wish that the reform effort fails.

Perhaps Americans need to be taught a basic lesson on the economics of employment-based health insurance before they will feel as smugly secure with it as they do now and before they will stop nitpicking health-reform efforts to death over this or that detail.

And America's currently insured middle class will be increasingly desperate if health reform fails. Millions more such families will see their take-home pay shrink. Millions will lose their employment-based insurance, especially in medium and small-sized firms. And millions will find themselves inexorably priced out of health care as we know it.

Milliman Inc., an employee benefits consulting firm, publishes annually its Milliman Medical Index on the total health spending by or for a typical American family of four with private health insurance. The index totals the family's out-of-pocket spending for health care plus the contribution employers and employees make to that family's job-related health insurance coverage.

The Milliman Medical Index stood at $8,414 in 2001. It had risen to $16,700 by 2009. It is likely to rise to $18,000 by next year. That is more than a doubling of costs in the span of a decade!

Since 2005, the index has grown at an average annual compound rate of 8.4 percent. Suppose we make it 8 percent for the coming decade. Then today's $16,700 will have grown to slightly over $36,000 by 2019.

Economists are convinced that this $36,000 would come virtually all out of the financial hides of employees, even if the employer pretended to be paying, say, 80 percent of the employment-based health insurance premiums. In the succinct words of the late United Automobile Worker Union leader Douglas Fraser:

"Before you start weeping for the auto companies and all they pay for medical insurance, let me tell you how the system works. All company bargainers worth their salt keep their eye on the total labor unit cost, and when they pay an admittedly horrendous amount for health care, that's money that can't be spent for higher [cash] wages or higher pensions or other fringe benefits. So we directly, the union and its members, feel the costs of the health care system." ("A National Health Policy Debate," Dartmouth Medical School Alumni Magazine, Summer 1989: 30)

Unfortunately, very few rank-and-file workers appreciate this fact. Aside from their still modest out-of-pocket payments and contributions to employment-based insurance premiums, most employees seem sincerely to believe that the bulk of their family's health care is basically paid for by "the company," which is why so few members of the middle class have ever been much interested in controlling health spending in this country.

The price for that indifference will be high. If efforts at better cost containment fail once again, and health care costs rise to $36,000 on average for a typical American family of four under age 65 -- as almost surely it would -- that $36,000 will be borne entirely by the family. That family's disposable income would be much higher if the growth of future health spending was better controlled. And, as noted, many smaller firms will stop altogether providing job-based health insurance.

It would be a major problem for families with an income of less than $100,000 a year. In 2007, only about 25 percent of American families had a money income of $100,000 or more. Close to 60 percent had family incomes of less than $75,000.

Here it must be remembered that the wages and salaries of the solid American middle class have been relatively stagnant in recent years and are likely to remain so for the next decade. Unemployment is not likely to fall significantly soon, regardless of what stock prices do on Wall Street. Indeed, often stock prices rise as firms lay off workers to drive up profits through leaner payrolls.

This prospect -- relatively stagnant family incomes combined with family health-care costs that double every decade -- is what America's middle class should contemplate as it thinks about the imperative of health reform. (emphasis by the blog poster)

It is a pity that this central issue seems to have been shoved aside by mendacious distortions from Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh and other extremist commentators seeking to frighten Americans with their prattle about "death panels" and "pulling plugs on granny" that no bill before Congress even remotely envisions.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Uwe Reinhardt. (except for the fact that I agree with them 100% because he happens to be right. - Damon)

In other words, if this reform effort fails, YOU pay. YOU pay higher taxes because the multitudes of uninsured will be forced into ERs - YOU will have less money to spend because costs will continue to spiral while your wages stagnate.
If you want that, then by all means fight the President's proposal - but don't even THINK about complaining to me when you lose your coverage. My sympathy will be shockingly limited.

What Healthcare reform means to YOU...

Start on the upper left:



Any questions?

Jon Stewart on the Great healthcare debate...

Glenn Beck VS....GLENN BECK?!?

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-13-2009/glenn-beck-s-operation

Seems as if his opinion about our nation's haelth care system has changed DRAMATICALLY over the last year and a half...

Actually, turns out Sarah Palin's RIGHT...

There ARE "Death Panels". Only the Government has nothing to do with them.

As Joe Conason writes:

When Republican politicians and right-wing talking heads bemoan the fictitious “death panels” that they claim would arise from health care reform, they are concealing a sinister reality from their followers. The ugly fact is that every year we fail to reform the existing system, that failure condemns tens of thousands of people to die—either because they have no insurance or because their insurance companies deny coverage or benefits when they become ill.


The best estimate of the annual death toll among Americans of working age due to lack of insurance or under-insurance is at least 20,000, according to studies conducted over the past decade by medical researchers, and is almost certainly rising as more and more people lose their coverage as costs continue to go up.

They die primarily because they didn’t have the coverage or the money to pay doctors and thus delayed seeking treatment until it was too late. They don’t get checkups, screenings and other preventive care. That is why uninsured adults are far more likely to be diagnosed with a disease, such as cancer or heart disease, at an advanced stage, which severely reduces their chances of survival.

This isn’t news. Seven years ago, the Institute of Medicine found that approximately 18,000 Americans had died in 2000 because they had no insurance. Using the same methodology combined with Census Bureau estimates of health coverage, the Urban Institute concluded that the incidence of death among the uninsured was enormous. Between 2000 and 2006, the last year of that study, the total number of dead was estimated to have reached 137,000—a body count more than double the number of casualties in the Vietnam War.

The Institute of Medicine also found that uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than adults with private health insurance, and other studies have warned that uninsured adults between the ages of 55 and 64 are even more prone to die prematurely. A lack of health insurance is the third-leading cause of death for that age cohort, following heart disease and cancer.

All those appalling figures, which are real rather than mythical, do not include the casualties of insurance company profiteering—namely, all the people, including small children, who perish because of the anonymous “death panels” that deny or delay coverage to consumers. Perhaps the most notorious case in recent years was that of Nataline Sarkisyan, the 17-year-old leukemia patient whose liver transplant was held up by insurance giant Cigna HealthCare. She died for no reason except to protect Cigna’s profit margin, but her unnecessary and cruel demise was hardly unique.

Research by the American Medical Association found that the nation’s largest insurance companies deny somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of all the claims submitted by doctors. That rough estimate is the best available because private insurers are not required to reveal such statistics (although they certainly maintain them), and the government does not collect them. But in June, a House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation found that three major insurance companies—Golden Rule, Assurant and WellPoint—rescinded the coverage of at least 20,000 people between 2003 and 2007 for minor errors, including typos, on their paperwork; a preexisting condition; or a family member’s medical history.

“They try to find something—anything—so they can say that this individual was not truthful,” said Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who oversaw the committee probe. He warned that insurance companies launch these nitpicking inquisitions whenever a policyholder becomes ill with a certain kind of condition—usually a costly and deadly one, such as ovarian cancer or leukemia. The result is denial and loss of coverage—and we now know that means increased mortality for innocent people.

So who are the members of the death panels?

You can find them among the corporate bureaucrats who concoct excuses to deny coverage and throw the sick off their rolls. You can find them among the politicians and lobbyists who have stalled reform for years while people died. You can find them among the morons who show up to shout slogans at town halls rather than seek solutions. And you can find them among the cable and radio blabbers, who invent scary stories about reform to conceal the sickening truth.

An Evangelical Minister speaks on the Health care debate

Jim Wallis is an Evangelical Minister Editor-In-Chief of Sojurners magazine

To get working links and so forth, go to http://blog.sojo.net/2009/08/12/we-must-act-on-health-care/

As a nation, we are engaged in making decisions about our health care that will impact our families and communities for generations to come.

And I must personally share with you that I’ve had enough of the misinformation and, frankly, misleading statements coming from those who oppose the transformation of a health system that currently renders the best health care to the wealthiest, depletes the savings of solidly middle-class Americans, and leaves 46 million people with no health-care coverage at all.

We don’t have to fall victim to the naysayers – those seeking to prop up the status quo and sustain the profits of the massive insurance corporations.

Business as usual is not what we’re about. It’s not what change is about. It’s certainly not what people of good will from all faiths, who embrace the Golden Rule and seek the common ground of justice and fairness, are about.

During the last big national debate on health-care reform in the early 1990s, the religious community mostly stayed out of the discussion. Not this time.

A friend of mine recently traveled across several states in the U.S. visiting friends on summer vacation. He told me that, everywhere he went, people asked him to read e-mails they’d received. These e-mails had no author and no citations to support the misleading statements about health-care reform they contained – including the false claim that, if health-care reform passed, it would force families to see doctors and receive care dictated by a government panel. This is not true.

At a recent meeting of leading faith groups in Washington, D.C., a leader of a large, national organization said they were receiving calls asking if the elderly would be simply left to die if health-care reform passed. The answer is NO.

These egregious and false accusations are being created for only one purpose: to manipulate and instill fear in American citizens.

This must stop. We are the ones who can stop it. Together, speaking out, acting out, and joining as one on a mission, we can push back the clouds of misinformation and fear-mongering, and allow the light of truth to shine through.

Today, right now, let’s join together making the health-care debate factual, worthy of our families and communities. Let’s put the special interests on notice that we want real health-care reform, not misinformation and fear-mongering.

Sojourners has created a rapid response Web site where you will find what you need to fight for the truth: Sojourners’ Health Care Reform Resources.

At this Web site I want you to:

SIGN Sojourners’ Health-Care Creed and let Congress know you stand for values-based reform.

SHARE Sojourners’ Guide to the Health-Care Reform Debate with your church and neighbors.

DISTRIBUTE Sojourners’ two-page flyer with health-care reform facts and values at your small group or Bible study.

USE the messages and talking points that Sojourners has created in your discussions with others.

CALL your Members of Congress today, toll-free, at #1-866-279-5474 and ask them to vote for health-care reform.

We must act.

We must speak out in our communities, schools, and workplaces. If we all take part, then our voices will join thousands of others across the nation. Other things you can do include writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper supporting health-care reform.

I pledge to you that I will do my part by keeping you updated on what’s happening here in Washington, D.C. Be prepared to receive action requests and notifications of conference calls that you should join.

Together, imagine the thousands of faithful voices speaking out, in unison – with all joining in.

Together, we can bring about the most sweeping change to our health-care system in history.

Together, passing health-care reform for our families is what people of good will from all faiths, who embrace the Golden Rule and seek the common ground of justice and fairness, can do. Join me.

Olbermann strikes again...

This time on Right-wing fearmongering, like Sarah Palin and the "Death Panels" that don't exist...

A relevant cartoon...

Here's something about Government-run health care...

Since 1964, Medicare has provided health care insurance for more than 100 million Americans...
no Medicare participant has ever been denied coverage because of a previous medical problem...
or because of a change or loss of a job...
No medicare participant has ever been told which physician he can or can't use...
or had his deductibles go up by 50% without warning...
No Medicare participant has had to send 15 letters to get her medical bills paid...
or had her contributions go toward a billion-dollar bonus for the head of Medicare...
As a percentage of the minimum wage, Medicare premiums have gone up only 20% in 45 years while covering everyone eligible...
while the average private health insurance premium has gone up 200% in the last 5 years, despite denying coverage to millions who need it most...

This is the so-called government-run health care that the right wingers want you to be afraid of. What they're afraid of is losing donations from the private health insurance lobby.

A Tip for The GOP: Look Away

This from a CONSERVATIVE columnist:

By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, August 5, 2009



Southern writer Walker Percy liked to poke fun at Ohioans in his novels, just to even things out a bit.

"Usually Mississippians and Georgians are getting it from everybody, and Alabamians," he once explained to an interviewer. "So, what's wrong with making smart-aleck remarks about Ohio? Nobody puts Ohio down. Why shouldn't I put Ohio down?"

Percy, the genial genius, laughed at his own remark.

Now, apparently, it's the Buckeye State's turn to poke back. In a fusillade of pique, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich charged that Southerners are what's wrong with the Republican Party.

"We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns," he told an interviewer with the Columbus Dispatch, referring to GOP senators from South Carolina and Oklahoma. "It's the Southerners. They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, 'These people, they're Southerners. The party's being taken over by Southerners. What the hell they got to do with Ohio?' "

Down South, people are trying to figure out what "errrr, errrrr" means. Jack Bass, author of eight books about social and political change in the South, speculated in an e-mail that Voinovich really meant grrrr, grrrrr, as in "growling canines whose bark scares more than do Obama's purrs, especially with the Dow at a nine-month high."

Whatever Voinovich's sound effects were intended to convey, his meaning was clear enough: Those ignorant, right-wing, Bible-thumping rednecks are ruining the party.

Alas, Voinovich was not entirely wrong.

Not all Southern Republicans are wing nuts. Nor does the GOP have a monopoly on ignorance or racism. And, the South, for all its sins, is also lush with beauty, grace and mystery. Nevertheless, it is true that the GOP is fast becoming regionalized below the Mason-Dixon line and increasingly associated with some of the South's worst ideas.

It is not helpful (or surprising) that "birthers" -- conspiracy theorists who have convinced themselves that Barack Obama is not a native son -- have assumed kudzu qualities among Republicans in the South. In a poll commissioned by the liberal blog Daily Kos, participants were asked: "Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?"

Hefty majorities in the Northeast, the Midwest and the West believe Obama was born in the United States. But in the land of cotton, where old times are not by God forgotten, only 47 percent believe Obama was born in America and 30 percent aren't sure.

Southern Republicans, it seems, have seceded from sanity.

Though Voinovich's views may be shared by others in the party, it's a tad late -- not to mention ungrateful -- to indict the South. Republicans have been harvesting Southern votes for decades from seeds strategically planted during the civil rights era. When Lyndon B. Johnson predicted in 1965 that the Voting Rights Act meant the South would go Republican for the next 50 years, he wasn't just whistling Dixie.

A telling anecdote recounted by Pat Buchanan to New Yorker writer George Packer last year captures the dark spirit that still hovers around the GOP. In 1966 Buchanan and Richard Nixon were at the Wade Hampton Hotel in Columbia, S.C., where Nixon worked a crowd into a frenzy: "Buchanan recalls that the room was full of sweat, cigar smoke, and rage; the rhetoric, which was about patriotism and law and order, 'burned the paint off the walls.' As they left the hotel, Nixon said, 'This is the future of this Party, right here in the South.' "

That same rage was on display again in the fall of 2008, but this time the frenzy was stimulated by a pretty gal with a mocking little wink. Sarah Palin may not have realized what she was doing, but Southerners weaned on Harper Lee heard the dog whistle.

The curious Republican campaign of 2008 may have galvanized a conservative Southern base -- including many who were mostly concerned with the direction Democrats would take the country -- but it also repelled others who simply bolted and ran the other way. Whatever legitimate concerns the GOP may historically have represented were suddenly overshadowed by a sense of a resurgent Old South and all the attendant pathologies of festering hate and fear.

What the GOP is experiencing now, one hopes, are the death throes of that 50-year spell that Johnson foretold. But before the party of the Great Emancipator can rise again, Republicans will have to face their inner Voinovich and drive a stake through the heart of old Dixie.

kathleenparker@washpost.com

Keith Olbermann's being mealy mouthed again...

Man NEVER says what he thinks...:-)

Got this from a Canadian friend...

And thought it worthwhile in the light of current events:

As a Canadian I marvel at all of these terms that are so common to Americans, but are virtually unknown to us.

Here's a partial list off the top of my head:

1. "Out of network"
There are no "networks" in Canada. Doctors and hospitals are not affiliated with private insurance companies. Doctors are private business entities and hospitals are usually run by non-profit boards or regional health associations.

2. "COBRA"
Health coverage is NOT tied to your place of employment in any way. So any COBRA-like scheme is unnecessary.

3. "Co-Pay"
The government pays 100% of basic care, 100% of the time. Drugs are not covered, but are subsidized by government to a point. And because of mass buys, discounts are obtained from the drug companies. That's why our prices are so much lower. Most employers offer a drug plan that pays for 100% of drug cost coverage.

4. "monthly premium\deductible"
Wazzat? We don't consider our health to be the same as our possessions.

5. "waiting for approval"
Doctors are the sole decision makers for health care. NOBODY influences or delays their decisions, warns them of costs or prevents them from giving treatment for any reason.

6. "Government interference"
The provincial government in each province PAYS for whatever services doctors provide. No questions asked. Unless the procedure is experimental, not medically necessary or unwarranted, doctors cannot deny basic care - by law.

7. "Health insurance lobby"
There are NO insurance companies for basic care, only companies for providing insurance for travelers. No money to be made here.

8. "bureaucracy"
When we visit a hospital or doctor's office, we walk in, get treated, walk out. No "applications", "registrations" or any other kind of paperwork is required. We NEVER have to talk to a single "government official" or wait for a "judgment".

9. "PRE-EXISTING CONDITION"
This is such a foreign concept to us. A Canadian's usual reaction to the explanation of this term is astonishment.


I'm glad to see that a sane health care system is within reach in America. Fight for it. It's WORTH it.

Something I've been up to lately...

This is a little project I'm working on - met Matt's brother Roland thru the latter's company, Science Castle. Matt was handling video for one of the classes I taught for Science Castle, and was impressed enough with the caliber of my voice work to ask me to help him with this. I had ENORMOUS fun with it. If it goes viral the way Matt's aiming for, we may even make a small 15-minute feature of it.
So spread the word!

Recycling at its coolest...

BIG thanks to my dad for passing this along - a hotel in Costa Rica has refurbished a Boeing 727 airframe and turned it into a hotel suite, of all things!

The fully outfitted, meticulously detailed, two bedroom, Boeing 727 fuselage suite. We have refurbished a vintage 1965 Boeing 727 airframe, which in its prior life shuttled globetrotters on South Africa Air and Avianca Airlines ( Colombia ).

Our phoenix is now ready for its future duty as the most exclusive hotel suite in Costa Rica.

Need a getaway place?

727 Home Entrance

We salvaged this airframe, piece by piece, from its San Jose airport resting place. We carefully transported the pieces on five, big-rig trucks to the jungles of Manuel Antonio where they have been resurrected into a unique jumbo hotel suite. Our classic airplane, nestled on the edge of the National Park in our Costa Verde II area, is perched on a 50-foot pedestal. At this height, you will enjoy scenic ocean and jungle views from the hard wood deck built atop the plane's former right wing.

The plane's interior is Costa Rican teak paneling from the cockpit to the tail. Furnishings are hand-carved, teak furniture from Java , Indonesia Our 727 home features two air conditioned bedrooms--one with two queen sized beds and the other with one queen sized bed, each with its own private bath-a flat screen TV, a kitchenette, dining area foyer; an ocean view terrace; a private entrance up a river rock, spiral staircase; and 360 degrees of surrounding gardens.


Enjoy an evening on the terrace while sipping a glass of wine and observing your tree top neighbors: sloths, toucans and monkeys................

Our refurbished Boeing 727 home is not the only such dwelling in the world: We were inspired by a Forbes Magazine article about a company offering hurricane-proof living via surplus Boeing 727 airframes! Of course, we were intrigued and found some new ways to introduce convenience and luxury to this very prosaic bit of aluminum scrap. We are sure you will agree with us!

TV Area


Kitchenette Dining Foyer


Master Bedroom


Master Bath


Second Bedroom


Wing Balcony


Ocean View From 727 Balcony


Amplified Balcony View

Rates:
From January 2, 2009 - April 30, 2009 $350.00 daily plus tax

From May 01, 2009 - Nov 17, 2009 $300.00 daily plus tax

Heckuva deal, I'd say...

An Editorial in Today's New York Times...

This hits EXACTLY what I've been saying...

The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers
By FRANK RICH
WHEN a Fox News anchor, reacting to his own network’s surging e-mail traffic, warns urgently on-camera of a rise in hate-filled, “amped up” Americans who are “taking the extra step and getting the gun out,” maybe we should listen. He has better sources in that underground than most.

The anchor was Shepard Smith, speaking after Wednesday’s mayhem at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Unlike the bloviators at his network and elsewhere on cable, Smith is famous for his highly caffeinated news-reading, not any political agenda. But very occasionally — notably during Hurricane Katrina — he hits the Howard Beale mad-as-hell wall. Joining those at Fox who routinely disregard the network’s “We report, you decide” mantra, he both reported and decided, loudly.

What he reported was this: his e-mail from viewers had “become more and more frightening” in recent months, dating back to the election season. From Wednesday alone, he “could read a hundred” messages spewing “hate that’s not based in fact,” much of it about Barack Obama and some of it sharing the museum gunman’s canard that the president was not a naturally born citizen. These are Americans “out there in a scary place,” Smith said.

Then he brought up another recent gunman: “If you’re one who believes that abortion is murder, at what point do you go out and kill someone who’s performing abortions?” An answer, he said, was provided by Dr. George Tiller’s killer. He went on: “If you are one who believes these sorts of things about the president of the United States ...” He left the rest of that chilling sentence unsaid.

These are extraordinary words to hear on Fox. The network’s highest-rated star, Bill O’Reilly, had assailed Tiller, calling him “Tiller the baby killer” and likening him to the Nazis, on 29 of his shows before the doctor was murdered at his church in Kansas. O’Reilly was unrepentant, stating that only “pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters” would link him to the crime. But now another Fox star, while stopping short of blaming O’Reilly, was breaching his network’s brand of political correctness: he tied the far-right loners who had gotten their guns out in Wichita and Washington to the mounting fury of Obama haters.

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in.

We don’t know whether the tiny subset of domestic terrorists in this crowd is egged on by political or media demagogues — though we do tend to assume that foreign jihadists respond like Pavlov’s dogs to the words of their most fanatical leaders and polemicists. But well before the latest murderers struck — well before another “antigovernment” Obama hater went on a cop-killing rampage in Pittsburgh in April — there have been indications that this rage could spiral out of control.

This was evident during the campaign, when hotheads greeted Obama’s name with “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” at G.O.P. rallies. At first the McCain-Palin campaign fed the anger with accusations that Obama was “palling around with terrorists.” But later John McCain thought better of it and defended his opponent’s honor to a town-hall participant who vented her fears of the Democrats’ “Arab” candidate. Although two neo-Nazi skinheads were arrested in an assassination plot against Obama two weeks before Election Day, the fever broke after McCain exercised leadership.

That honeymoon, if it was one, is over. Conservatives have legitimate ideological beefs with Obama, rightly expressed in sharp language. But the invective in some quarters has unmistakably amped up. The writer Camille Paglia, a political independent and confessed talk-radio fan, detected a shift toward paranoia in the air waves by mid-May. When “the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation,” she observed in Salon, “there is reason for alarm.” She cited a “joke” repeated by a Rush Limbaugh fill-in host, a talk-radio jock from Dallas of all places, about how “any U.S. soldier” who found himself with only two bullets in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden would use both shots to assassinate Pelosi and then strangle Reid and bin Laden.

This homicide-saturated vituperation is endemic among mini-Limbaughs. Glenn Beck has dipped into O’Reilly’s Holocaust analogies to liken Obama’s policy on stem-cell research to the eugenics that led to “the final solution” and the quest for “a master race.” After James von Brunn’s rampage at the Holocaust museum, Beck rushed onto Fox News to describe the Obama-hating killer as a “lone gunman nutjob.” Yet in the same show Beck also said von Brunn was a symptom that “the pot in America is boiling,” as if Beck himself were not the boiling pot cheering the kettle on.

But hyperbole from the usual suspects in the entertainment arena of TV and radio is not the whole story. What’s startling is the spillover of this poison into the conservative political establishment. Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan G.O.P. chairman who ran for the party’s national chairmanship this year, seriously suggested in April that Republicans should stop calling Obama a socialist because “it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.” Anuzis pushed “fascism” instead, because “everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.” He didn’t seem to grasp that “fascism” is nonsensical as a description of the Obama administration or that there might be a risk in slurring a president with a word that most find “bad” because it evokes a mass-murderer like Hitler.

The Anuzis “fascism” solution to the Obama problem has caught fire. The president’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and his speech in Cairo have only exacerbated the ugliness. The venomous personal attacks on Sotomayor have little to do with the 3,000-plus cases she’s adjudicated in nearly 17 years on the bench or her thoughts about the judgment of “a wise Latina woman.” She has been tarred as a member of “the Latino KKK” (by the former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo), as well as a racist and a David Duke (by Limbaugh), and portrayed, in a bizarre two-for-one ethnic caricature, as a slant-eyed Asian on the cover of National Review. Uniting all these insults is an aggrieved note of white victimization only a shade less explicit than that in von Brunn’s white supremacist screeds.

Obama’s Cairo address, meanwhile, prompted over-the-top accusations reminiscent of those campaign rally cries of “Treason!” It was a prominent former Reagan defense official, Frank Gaffney, not some fringe crackpot, who accused Obama in The Washington Times of engaging “in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain.” He claimed that the president — a lifelong Christian — “may still be” a Muslim and is aligned with “the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood.” Gaffney linked Obama by innuendo with Islamic “charities” that “have been convicted of providing material support for terrorism.”

If this isn’t a handy rationalization for another lone nutjob to take the law into his own hands against a supposed terrorism supporter, what is? Any such nutjob can easily grab a weapon. Gun enthusiasts have been on a shopping spree since the election, with some areas of our country reporting percentage sales increases in the mid-to-high double digits, recession be damned.

The question, Shepard Smith said on Fox last week, is “if there is really a way to put a hold on” those who might run amok. We’re not about to repeal the First or Second Amendments. Hard-core haters resolutely dismiss any “mainstream media” debunking of their conspiracy theories. The only voices that might penetrate their alternative reality — I emphasize might — belong to conservative leaders with the guts and clout to step up as McCain did last fall. Where are they? The genteel public debate in right-leaning intellectual circles about the conservative movement’s future will be buried by history if these insistent alarms are met with silence.

It’s typical of this dereliction of responsibility that when the Department of Homeland Security released a plausible (and, tragically, prescient) report about far-right domestic terrorism two months ago, the conservative response was to trash it as “the height of insult,” in the words of the G.O.P. chairman Michael Steele. But as Smith also said last week, Homeland Security was “warning us for a reason.”

No matter. Last week it was business as usual, as Republican leaders nattered ad infinitum over the juvenile rivalry of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich at the party’s big Washington fund-raiser. Few if any mentioned, let alone questioned, the ominous script delivered by the actor Jon Voight with the G.O.P. imprimatur at that same event. Voight’s devout wish was to “bring an end to this false prophet Obama.”

This kind of rhetoric, with its pseudo-Scriptural call to action, is toxic. It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren’t warned.

And now, the backlash:

Because Shepard Smith of Fox News had the temerity to call it like he saw it, the Right is now calling for his head. The whole article can be found atMediaMatters.com.

On June 10, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith said the Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting validated a recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report alerting law enforcement to an increased threat from "rightwing extremists," including "white supremacists." Smith said: "[T]his is a former military guy and he's gone extremist. They were warning us for a reason -- not about something political or social or anything else. ... It was a warning to us all. And it appears now that they were right." Smith also said that he's receiving "more and more frightening" emails from viewers since President Obama's election, including conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate. In response to Smith's remarks about the Holocaust museum shooting, several conservative media figures have attacked Smith or called for his firing from Fox News.

Sorry folks, but Jew-hating Holocaust deniers ARE extreme rightists. And DHS is correct. Anybody remember Timothy McVeigh? His ilk is on the rise again, and they're being egged on by the likes of Beck, Hannity, Coulter and Limbaugh - though, like all good neocons, they're accountability-averse. They'll continue to claim thay have no responsibility for this while simultaneously blaming the "liberal" media for the decline of American culture.
I wonder if they ever actually listen to what comes out of their mouths?

Whoa...

Even FOX news is starting to connect the dots:


Wouldn't have expected this from them.

Now, THIS is funny...

The opening bit from "Frasier" on 2/11/99 - 6 minutes of some of the best physical comedy you'll ever see. David Hyde-Pierce turns in a bravura performance:

Good Lord, they've gone utterly around the bend...

The right wing in this country has officially gone into "wackyland".

And that's a bad thing, as surprised as some of you may be to hear that from me. We NEED a viable opposition party in this country - one-party rule is a little too "politburo" for my liking. But the Republicans aren't it anymore - they have gone utterly, certifiably, NUTS.

As evidence, I cite as Exhibit A Rush Limbaugh's recent call to boycott GM until the government gets out of it. Brilliance! Let's hurt AMERICAN workers and send MORE money overseas because we don't like the President! let's put MORE people out of work and put our economy in even worse shape than it's already in! THAT will show Washigton who's boss! Let's destroy our national economy to prove we're right!

Rush, you're still on the drugs, aren't you?

As Exhibit B - M, I give you the recent article in Salon Titled "Crazy Right-Wing Myths About Obama", which sums these up better than I could - tells you what they are, and who's spreading them. WARNING - you may feel your own sanity slipping away as you read this...these are THAT nutso.

And finally, as Exhibit N, we're back to Rush, and his now-famous declaration "I hope he (Obama) fails". For heaven's sake, this is like being on an airliner and hoping your pilot fails because you don't like his views on universal health care!
Stone-cold fact, folks: Obama fails, we are ALL screwed.

And as to the right wing's newly-rediscovered fiscal responsiblity: where were these guys when Bush and the GOP Congress were taking surpluses and turning them to record deficits? Resoundingly silent, is where they were. The GOP drove this country into a ditch (AGAIN - just like in 1896, 1929, and 1991), and now they're gonna bitch about the cost of the tow truck!

Priceless...and certifiably insane.