The Progressive Curmudgeon®

Scrooge Is Premier Of Alberta, Canada

2010-01-17T11:03:00.003-05:00

It turns out that Scrooge – Ebenezer or McDuck, take your pick – is alive and well and running the Canadian province of Alberta. On Thursday, Conservative Premier Ed Stelmach told reporters the provincial government wouldn’t be donating a nickel of its lush, oil-and-gas royalty enriched treasury stash to aid in Haitian relief efforts.

Instead, Stelmach told reporters that Alberta contributes to humanitarian aid in other ways, largely through charitable tax deductions for individuals.

"That is the best tax deduction in Canada, so those individuals that want to contribute to humanitarian aid will see that tax credit," Stelmach stated proudly.

Huh? Even George Bush, the original tightfisted “compassionate conservative,” is doing more to help the quake-levelled island nation.

Meanwhile, far poorer provinces and the federal government were busy putting Alberta to shame. Canadian forces search-and-rescue teams were among the first to arrive in Port-au-Prince, showing up on military aircraft within hours of the disaster, and Ottawa pledged $50-million in relief and rebuilding efforts. The Ontario government, struggling under the weight of massive unemployment in its huge automotive, manufacturing and financial services sectors, managed to scrape together $1-million to donate as did Canada’s poorest province, Newfoundland and Labrador. Even sparsely populated Saskatchewan, where agriculture rather than energy drives the local economy, found $250,000 to add to the relief effort.

Stelmach’s comments did not go down well in Alberta, incluing among its overwhelmingly conservative base of voters, and his stinginess was roundly booed by people across the political spectrum – and across the nation. The chorus quickly grew so loud that, by Friday, the premier was back in front of television cameras to say he changed his mind: Alberta would somehow scrape together $500,000 to donate to relief efforts.

While that sounds like a noticeable chunk of money, when compared to Newfoundland and Labrador where the major industry is poverty and the largest business sector is unemployment, this is chump change. Alberta probably spends more on coffee and sweet rolls at government meetings each year than it is giving to Haitian relief. And as a percent of its provincial tax revenue, it is as if Newfies were contributing something like $30-million, dwarfing Alberta’s miniscule contribution; in those same comparative terms, it’d be like Saskatchewan turning over the proceeds of an entire year’s crop to help ease the suffering in Haiti and contribute to rebuilding the country as opposed to Alberta’s paltry donation.

Meanwhile, Alberta’s oil-and-gas fields’ pump out nearly $500,000 in royalty payments to the province every week – maybe more – and the province’s political sway on Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the primary reason Canada played mostly an obstructionist role at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.

It’s amazing that Canada, with its deserved global reputation as a generous, caring nation, could produce an Ed Stelmach, as much of a Scrooge as a Disney character and as big a dinosaur as the fossil fields that are uncovered regularly in Canada’s prairie land.

Bah humbug, Premier Stelmach, because you are – with apologies to Keith Olbermann – today’s worst person in Canada.

GOP Rejects Reid’s Half Measures, Embraces Gangsta Rap

2010-01-12T09:21:00.004-05:00

Leading Republicans went on Fox News Monday to say they were outraged by two-year-old remarks of Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid about the electability of Barack Obama.

Reid, an early Obama supporter, spoke of Obama's light skin colour and his lack of "Negro dialect." The GOP, they said, would never apply such superficial criteria to the choice of "high-toned African-American officials," according to former Sen. Trent Lott, mentioning former Secretary’s of State Condaleeza Rice and Colin Powell and Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele.

Republican officials added that the GOP would never use an outmoded term such as "Negro," except in that beloved Christmas spiritual, Barack The Magic Negro.

Meanwhile, Liz Cheney urged her party to unite behind rapper 50 Cent for the GOP presidential candidate in 2012.

"That will teach Reid a lesson," Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, said. She noted that so-called “gangsta” rap is about guns, wearing big crosses, distrust of government, entrepreneurship, rejection of science and elite education, over-dressing, torturing your enemy, occasionally shooting your friends and upholding old-time patriarchy.

"I'm not accusing Mr. Cent of any of these things, mind you. Let's face it, Tupac and Notorious B.I.G aren't here any more, but maybe we can hearken back to them," Cheney added.

Plus, she observed, "singing along with gangsta rap lyrics makes it possible to go way beyond just saying 'Negro'," the way Chip Saltsman, one-time candidate for chair of the Republican National Committee, and Reid did.

"That will be a relief for a lot of members of our party," Cheney acknowledged.

"You can't accuse gangsta rap of being anything lite," she said. "Nobody in my family has ever been able to understand a word they say – but we like the values, especially the guns and shooting and torturing people."

Embracing this subculture, Cheney asserted, would help the Republican Party get back to its core values. Moreover, she said, the Republican Party could reinvigorate gangsta rap, which many say is dead, killed by the opulence the big payouts by recording companies made possible.

"Did you see what we did to Baghdad and Saddam? Nobody is better at gang wars and busting caps in people's asses than we are. We're proof that rich people don't have to be soft or nice."

Asked about a possible running mate for 50 Cent, Cheney just smiled coyly.

DHS Announces Mandatory Underwear Inspection

2009-12-28T13:03:00.003-05:00

Responding quickly to the Christmas Eve terrorist threat aboard a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit from Amsterdam, the US Dept. of Homeland Security announced new security procedures today in addition to not letting passengers use toilets one hour before landing.

Enhancing its screening passengers at security checkpoints, starting tomorrow all passengers on every flight arriving in, departing from or flying over the US will be required to remove their trousers or skirts at boarding gates for a last-minute underwear check.

According to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, news reports that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – the man accused of trying to blow up NW253 – concealed explosives in his underpants are accurate “so we want to be sure that, along with making people walk barefoot through check points, and banning shampoo and deodorant, no one is trying to sneak explosives aboard in their knickers.”

She also announced that, as part of the new measure, passengers will be required to put their underwear on the outside of their clothes at checkpoints and, halfway through each flight, flight attendants will have each passenger give their bra’s, panties and briefs or boxers to the person sitting directly in front of them “who will wear them for the balance of the flight.”

Dismissing suggestions that this is a slapstick strategy straight out of Bananas, a 1971 Woody Allen film in which the famed writer-actor accidentally takes over a South American dictatorship, Sec. Napolitano told ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday “this new tactic will absolutely foil anyone from using their own underwear as a terrorist weapon.”

Admitting that some passengers may not wear any underwear at all, Sec. Napolitano insists DHS is prepared.

“Part of the new regulations requires airlines to carry spare underwear on all planes,” she says, “so everyone will be subjected to the same rigorous inspection requirements.”

On Wall St., news of the enhanced security procedures sent stock prices of apparel manufacturers Hanes and Jockey soaring in heavy trading Monday afternoon.

You Can't Fix Stupid

2009-12-28T11:57:00.001-05:00

"Sure wish folks would invent something to keep the sun out of my eyes!"

Neo-Con Renews Call to Bomb Iran in NY Times Op-Ed

2009-12-25T10:18:00.003-05:00

They’re baaaack.

Having disappeared under a rock after being exposed as frauds during Iraq on a scale matched only by the Wizard of Oz, the neo-con foreign policy lug nuts are sticking their heads out again, looking for a shadow by calling for renewing a policy that totally destroyed America’s moral, ethical and political standing in the world, especially among Moslems: Launch another pre-emptive strike in the Middle East.

T’was the night before Christmas when Dr. Alan J. Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas-Austin, penned an Op-Ed in The New York Times urging Pres. Obama to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran in a pre-emptive strike to end its nuclear enrichment programme. Never mind that authoritative sources that actuaIrlly know what they’re talking about, ranging from UN inspectors to the CIA to noted Middle East authority Dr. Juan Cole, say there’s no evidence that Iran wants anything more than to enhance its electrical generating capacity and, possibly, have a stand-by ability to make nuclear bombs in an emergency the same way Japan has such capacity. Phooey, snorts Dr. Kuperman: Drop bombs tonight, insisting “The sooner the United States takes action, the better.”

Sure, why not? The Cheney Doctrine worked so well the last time America shot itself in the foot following it so let’s try again and to hell with any repercussions.

“Iran could retaliate by aiding America’s opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does that anyway,” Dr. Kuperman writes dismissively. He’s equally dismissive of history.

Blasé About Facts

In fact, Tehran has been quietly cooperating with the US since 2001 by ensuring Afghan insurgents don’t flee into Iran and trying – unsuccessfully – to stem the flow of option out of Afghanistan. Moreover, the Islamic Republic didn’t start meddling in Iraq to assist various Shiite factions until Civil War broke out with Sunni’s during the US-tolerated ethnic cleansing of Baghdad. In any event, Sunni’s and Shiites have been fighting with each other since sometime around 700, long before there was an Iraqi or Iranian state, more than a full millennia before the US was even created and some 1,900 years before Bush charged head first into Iraq.

You’d think an academic such as Dr. Kuperman wouldn’t be quite so blasé about facts.

In what amounts to a throwaway line, Dr. Kuperman concedes that “bombing might not work” before going on to argue, essentially, “So what?”

For evidence, he reaches back 30 years to cite Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor. Dr. Kuperman claims it deterred Saddam Hussein from further pursuit of nuclear weapons, “a fact that eluded American intelligence until after the 2003 invasion.”

Still Cherrypicking Facts

What history books does this guy read?

Saddam Hussein didn’t rebuild Osirak because he needed money for his Army to fight a war with Iran. Then, UN sanctions effectively cut him off from funds, supplies and equipment to build any nuclear capability, civilian or military, even if he wanted to do so. Moreover, it’s been well-documented that intelligence agencies in London, Berlin and Washington knew full well that Iraq had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons long before the 2003 invasion; it’s just that Bush and Cheney cherry-picked the information they revealed to the UN, Congress and the American people.

Indeed, just a few weeks ago, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted on BBC’s Newsnight he knew in 2003 there weren’t any such horrors waiting in Baghdad when he tag-teamed with Bush to invade Iraq.

If Dr. Kuperman wants to cherry-pick facts, as his fellow neo-con’s did all during the Iraq folly, you’d think he would have learned by now to at least pick those that are true.

Not content with one bombing run, Kuperman proclaims “Iran’s atomic sites might need to be bombed more than once to persuade Tehran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

Tehran will just sit there and take it, of course, before crying “Uncle.” They won’t fire off a few missiles at Israel, Turkey and US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. They won’t flood either country with arms or maybe even troops. And the Iranian dissident movement won’t collapse, supporting its nation when the US attacks.

The saddest thing about Kuperman is that the Times gave him serious space in a supposedly serious newspaper to spout the same discredited nonsense that got us into a mess in the Middle East at the same time Pres. Obama is trying to extricate the world from the chaos unleashed the last time the neo-con war mongers had their way.

Peace on earth and all of that.

Why Is GOP Running Possible War Criminal For Congress?

2009-12-20T09:26:00.007-05:00

Florida’s 22nd Congressional District is a narrow stretch of heavily gerrymandered coastal land stretching from Ft. Lauderdale north to Jupiter, mostly hugging beach communities but occasionally meandering inland to grab bits of West Palm Beach –Palm Beach’s down-market cousin, home to the black and Hispanic domestics, gardeners and roustabouts who work in the Palm’s posh hotels, luxury condos and gated estates – as well as Coral Springs and Cooper City.

To really see the district, stay off the interstate and crawl through the small towns that blur together along US 1 from Lauderdale to Jupiter. They’re towns where the humidity hangs like a panting dog, school test scores are further south than the state itself, gun shops dot an unending parade of strip malls, and waitresses in small diners wearing big hair and nylon uniforms serve coffee to Lou and Mario and Eudora.

You won’t find many yachts in the harbours; they’re up in Palm Beach or down in Lauderdale. The marinas here mostly berth sea-battered fishing boats, second or third-hand 22’ runabouts with goofy names like “Phil’s Pholly” or “Mary’s Movin,” and little sloops so far past their use-by date that only a fool would dare take them outside the breakwater.

It’s like stumbling into a John D. MacDonald novel; stop for lunch and you half-expect Travis McGee will saunter in right behind you.

The district is also where Allen West, a former lieutenant colonel who was drummed out of the Army for torturing an Iraqi prisoner by holding a mock execution after allowing men under his command to repeatedly beat the detainee, has the GOP endorsement to run for Congress in 2010.

America’s Worst

The military boasts that its personnel are among America’s best. And, for the majority of officers and enlisted people serving bravely, with distinction and without incident, it’s true. But people like West give lie to the boast.

So why did Sid Dinerstein, chair of the Palm Beach County Republican Party and author of a self-published right wing political manifesto, Adults Only, hand the GOP endorsement for Congress in FL22 to a man who effectively admitted to committing two war crimes?

The case against West stems from an Aug. 20, 2003 incident at a military base in Taji, just north of Baghdad, when West was interrogating an Iraqi policeman who was thought to have information about a plot to ambush a US convoy.

In testimony at his Article 32 hearing – a military grand jury – West said the policeman was not cooperating so he allowed four soldiers he commanded to beat the detainee’s head and body. Then joining in the festivities, West admits threatening to kill the prisoner. Military prosecutors said West followed up by taking the blindfolded suspect outside, putting his head in a weapons clearing barrel and firing his 9mm pistol into the barrel one foot from the prisoner’s ear.

According to an August 2009 article in The Washington Post, West told the beaten Iraqi that "this is where it will end," meaning that West would kill him if he did not talk. When faced with another refusal, West said, he took the Iraqi's head under his arm, pushed it into the barrel and shot twice with his pistol a foot from the Iraqi's ear. He said he pointed the gun away.

How thoughtful; West is a real officer and a gentleman.

When West testified that he had "no malice toward (the detainee)" and that he "just wanted information," prosecutors presented West's typed statement prepared after the incident, ordering him to read aloud his report to the court: "In my anger, I couldn't remember how many shots were fired."

In Dec. 2003, the Army took action. West was fined $5,000, relieved of all command responsibilities and allowed to retire in what amounts to a plea bargain. The Army could have held a court martial where, if found guilty, he could have faced 11 years in prison, according to military prosecutors.

West's GOP and tea party supporters in Florida’s 22nd call him a hero. But military prosecutors say he committed torture, violating articles 128 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

“By all rights, he (West) should have been put on trial, convicted for war crimes and sent to prison,” says a former Army judge advocate who is familiar with the case. “But (then-Maj. Gen. Raymond) Odierno, the top commander in the area, just wanted the case to go away. All hell was breaking out in Iraq at the time. Although it wasn’t yet public, Abu Ghraib was happening and neither top brass nor the (Bush) administration wanted to risk bad news leaking out about bad officers.”

Sidestepping

Trying to short circuit the humiliation of his military record being publicly exposed, West responded to the Washington Post by criticizing coverage of his Army misdeeds, stammering in a news release, “If we continue to have our Country led by … ‘perfumed princes’ the security of our Republic is threatened. I would challenge President Obama and Attorney General Holder to find the intestinal fortitude to make hard decisions, and not be cowards prosecuting those far more honourable.

“I shall not allow the future and legacy of my Country to be left to petulant, intellectual elites who would sacrifice our Liberty and Freedom,” West fumed. Yet for a man who expresses disdain for “intellectual elites” and “perfumed princes” – whatever that means – his election website boasts of the three degrees West earned, including two Masters. Uhm, doesn’t that put him in among the perfumed intellectual elite?

And yet he sidesteps the key issue of the charges against him: Torturing prisoners. The closest he comes is saying, “I made a simple statement at my Article 32 hearing when asked if I would take the same action again, ‘If it is about the safety and lives of my men, I would go through hell with a gasoline can’.”

West doesn’t bother explaining how an unarmed and bound prisoner being held at a secure Army base posed a risk to “the safety and lives of my men” that justified a beating and mock execution.

Yet despite West’s shameful military record and triangulating on his plea deal, neither the Palm Beach County Republican Party nor Dinerstein, its chair, are stepping back from their endorsement.

Cut Taxes, Monger Fear

Florida’s 22nd is represented by Ron Klein, a member of the House’s New Democrat Coalition, a self-described group of “moderate, pro-business Democrats” – read “ConservaDem” business shills – who often vote against much of the party’s platform. First elected in 2006, Klein is seeking his third term in 2010. Yet as marginal a Democrat as Klein might be, West makes him seem like Markos Moulitsas by comparison.

For example, in a campaign appearance that was taped and made its way around the right wing blogosphere, West says repeatedly that the US is fighting “Islamic jihad” – fundamentalist code words calling for a Christian war on Islam. He ignores the reality that even the Pentagon and CIA have concluded the insurgency in both countries is between rival religious factions, tribes, warlords and criminal gangs. Both government and independent investigations have stated unequivocally that many Afghan fighters are farmers with no particular political views who either simply want foreign armies out of their country or are being paid $5-to-$10 a day to plant roadside bombs and lob RGPs out of the hills at US and other forces.

But West’s debunked claim is typical of how the GOP operates, relying on unsubstantiated fear mongering and distorting facts to try scoring points.

Worse, his prescription for fixing America’s broken health care system is more of the same: “Our health care system needs reforms … These reforms can be instituted within the classic conservative principles of limited government, liberty, individual responsibility and accountability, and free market solutions.”

I guess “individual responsibility” means the 47-million people without health care coverage better stay healthy.

He is equally off-kilter on energy, stating on his website that “In the late 70s we were importing some 18-20% of our energy resources from foreign sources. Today we are importing close to 65% of our energy resources from foreign sources, making the failures of the Department of Energy evident to everyone.”

That both the US and its economy grew over the last 30-some years, more than quadrupling the demand for energy, isn’t mentioned nor does West explain the tautology of somehow equating rising consumption with the Dept. of Energy – which has nothing to do with determining how or where oil comes from. Forget about alternative sources. To West, it’s all drill, baby, drill.

Finally, in a district thick with immigrants, he concludes that “furthering the illegal immigrant agenda over that of America, I consider them seditious and treasonous … Talk radio host Michael Savage sums this issue up nicely: Borders, culture, and language.”

Since America is a land of immigrants, I’m not sure what he means by “furthering the illegal immigrant agenda over America.” What is the illegal immigrant agenda, anyway? And why is a black candidate quoting the words of Michael Savage, an avowed racist?

Don Dinerstein

Enter Sid Dinerstein, godfather of the Palm Beach GOP apparatus, who handed the endorsement to West.

According to Pete Corson, a Florida political observer and partially disabled Vietnam veteran, “Palm Beach has the clout on this one, so Sid gets his way. Most of us have had a hard time figuring this one out. Sid is not a racist per se but he is damn close. There has to be a deal in here somewhere.”

In his self-published book, Dinerstein lashes out at immigrants, blaming them for so-called “multiculturalism” by writing “As long as there were many cultures, English was essential. Now that there is one other extraordinarily large culture…the Hispanic culture…English is even more essential. In Canada, they have friends and ‘amis’ – and Separation referenda. If we have friends and “amigos,” our “e pluribus” will stop becoming ‘Unum.’”

Excuse me, Sid, but Canada has had only two separation votes in its long history, both defeated, and Québec nationalism all but died off after the last vote in the early 1990s. And how does someone speaking Spanish destroy the concept of e pluribus Unum?

And when Democrats are in control, Dinerstein is a fiscal hawk, writing “Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Congress and the President are going to chip in $100-billion to help them rebuild that town, and we say “OK.” Where’s it coming from? The answer is, nowhere. It’s Off Budget. That means that it doesn’t change the 200 billion dollars one bit. But it adds $100-billion to next year’s debt. It’s Off the budget and On the debt. Nice!”

Sid conveniently forgets that it was George Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress that did this off-budget sleight-of-hand year after year – including costs for the illegal Iraq misadventure and the botched Afghan war.

Toss Up

According to Corson, “(West’s) appeal has been minimal in the more moneyed ‘white’ areas of the district, so most observers regard his candidacy as a wash. The conventional wisdom is he loses in a close race to Ron Klein because he isn't Jewish and he won't get enough "black" votes to offset the low turnout in the country club areas.

“Otherwise, insiders are sticking tightly to the existing script, believing that they represent truth, justice, and the American Way,” Corson concludes

So Allen West campaigns in FL22 by crying out for taking back the country – but from whom?

I seem to recall rather large elections in 2006 and again in 2008 in which the now-sitting president and Democrats running for House and Senate seats were elected by an overwhelming majority of voters who were dissatisfied by, and fed up with, the other party’s ideas, demagoguery, lack of respect for the Constitution, and a total and complete disregard for American laws, traditions and values.

Candidate West is a living example of why Republicans – those like him as well as those who actually put country ahead of party – were tossed from office in the last two elections. And why he should be kept as far from Congress as possible.

h/t to Steve Kufus

Joe Lieberman Is “Unbalanced”

2009-12-17T13:24:00.005-05:00

According to five clinical psychiatrists who describe themselves as being politically aware, Joe Lieberman’s behaviour over the last few weeks of the Senate health care debate reveals numerous signs that he is increasingly “unbalanced.”

All five caution that, while it is difficult to make a specific diagnosis without seeing a patient in their office, Lieberman’s public statements show growing evidence of an individual who is disconnected with pieces of the reality around them.

“If somebody called me and described the symptoms in their spouse that Joe Lieberman is displaying, I’d recommend they come in for an appointment or two so an initial assessment could be made,” says Dr. Stanley Shapiro, who retired recently from his practice and says he is a lifelong Democrat. “From what I’ve watched on television and read in the papers, he’s acting clinically unbalanced.”

At the same time, senior Senate aides from both sides of the aisle report that while Lieberman has always been unpredictable and difficult to work with, it’s a trait that became magnified after he lost his primary challenge to Ned Lamont in 2006.

The psychiatrists all spoke in their professional capacity and, to ensure I wasn’t inadvertently interviewing only doctors who tilt left, I asked each to identify their political views. Of the five, one described their views as progressive or Democratic, two say they lean towards “conservative” or “Republican” and one refused to indicate their political position. Some would speak for attribution but others requested anonymity, citing professional concerns.

“He contradicts himself from day to day,” notes Dr. Irvin Wolkoff, citing as an example Lieberman’s statement last Friday that he would wait for the Congressional Budget Office to “score” the then-compromise version of the Senate health care bill before deciding whether to support the bill – and then appearing on Face the Nation two days later voicing die-hard opposition.

Dr. Wolkoff, a self-described conservative, summed up Lieberman in two words.

“He’s meshugener,” the psychiatrist stated matter-of-factly, using the Yiddish word for “crazy person.” Asked if this is a personal or professional opinion, Dr. Wolkoff replied half-jokingly, “maybe a bit of both.”

In other words, no one – people working on the Hill, Pres. Obama or people in The White House, voters back in Connecticut or cable news’ talking heads – should be surprised that it’s impossible to negotiate with Lieberman on health care or anything else substantive. He’s simply acting crazy.

The Beytrayed’s Revenge

The question is why; what might explain Lieberman’s behaviour?

“No doubt, Lieberman felt betrayed by voters in 2006,” says a Boston analyst who does not want her name used, “and this is his unconscious acting out a sort of ‘revenge of the betrayed.’ I see it frequently in my practice with patients who are angry that their spouse had an affair or who lost their job in circumstances they consider unfair.”

Several other psychiatrists echo her judgment.

“When he felt cornered, he even abandoned his own long-held policies,” states a Chicago psychiatrist under assurances of anonymity. “He’s favoured a Medicare buy-in since 2000 but dropped (his support) in a day because a liberal Democrat in the House said it was a good idea.

“This is the mark of someone grappling with major psychological issues,” the politically independent doctor concludes. “He needs help and, meantime, he’s damaging himself and the nation.”

Hillside Manner

Senate staffers are as worried about Sen. Lieberman as are mental health professionals.

A half-dozen senior aides interviewed for this article expressed varying degrees of frustration and despair in dealing with the Senator and his staff. None allowed their name to be used because they’re not authorised to speak to the media on-the-record.

“He’s always been a problem child,” says a senior staff member of a Republican senator, “but in the last few years Sen. Lieberman often seems disconnected with what is happening around him.”

When that occurs, said another who works for a long-time Democratic senator, “he lashes out.”

In her Friday column in the New York Times, Gail Collins, who has covered Lieberman since the days when he was a Connecticut state senator, is more colourfully blunt:

“Observers who have known him for a long time feel as though they’re living out a scene in a science-fiction movie when the guy who’s just been bitten by the vampire-moose comes home and sits down to dinner, unaware that he’s sprouting antlers.”

Bah Humbug! Holiday Films So Cute I Puke

2009-12-12T11:37:00.010-05:00

Crank up the schmaltz and mix in a preposterous plot. It’s nearly Christmas and for the next few weeks we’ll be bombarded with movies that give me hives.

We’ve all had the experience of wandering into the wrong bar and immediately realizing that, unless we leave quickly, something horrid will occur. This has happened to me in Toronto, once in Detroit, twice in Jamaica where every local bar seems to have something bad happening in it, and in Manhattan’s meat packing district. In each case, I sized up the situation fast, realised that my life hung in the balance and beat a hasty retreat.

This is exactly how I feel about Christmas movies.

If I turn on television and the words “John Hughes,” “Chevy Chase,” “Tim Allen” and “Dan Aykroyd” pop up on the screen, my blood runs cold, my temples throb and I switch over to Fat Boy Hackeysack on ESPN2, or faux history shows like Ancestors in the Attic and Ice Road Truckers. I’d rather watch more bad news from Afghanistan on BBC World, or even Céline Dion on Ice.

In fact, I’ll watch almost anything other than Christmas movies, which have one of only four plots: Cuddly, cloying, cretinous and cute.

It’s a Wonderful Life, a story about a small-time banker with a heart of gold, manages to combine all four elements as it inexplicably lionises a mulyak who risks the financial health of his entire community by making a series of bad loans to people who are in no position to repay them. Particularly unsuitable for holiday viewing this year, the 1947 Frank Capra-corn film should be re-titled It’s A Wonderful Subprime Life, with Bernie Madoff and the entire AIG board in digitally manipulated cameo appearances.

A Christmas Carol, in any of its myriad versions, perpetuates the myth that the obscenely rich can be made to see the error of their ways and be rehabilitated even though anyone who has ever dealt with someone obscenely rich knows it isn’t true.

Miracle on 34th Street, in which a department store Santa goes on trial to prove that Kris Kringle actually exists, has been tugging at heartstrings for so long that everybody’s heartstrings are completely tugged out.

Where Old Stars Die

More recent Christmas movies resemble elephants’ graveyards where deposed matinee idols go to die. How sad to see Robert Mitchum, at the tail end of his brilliant career, trading one-liners in Scrooged with a smarmy Bill Murray. How distressing to see Jamie Lee Curtis, once the very hottest of the hot, served up as a paunchy sight gag in a skimpy bikini in Christmas with the Kranks. How unsettling to see Robert Duvall in Four Christmases.

These people were genuine stars. Not stand-up comics like Will Ferrell or Chevy Chase or Vince Vaughn who get cast in films only because they sell tickets, but bona fide movie stars. Christmas With the Kranks is so bad that after 20 minutes, I switched the audio from to French from English and SAP’d Korean subtitles hoping it would make Aykroyd seem amusing.

Pas de chance.

The kids in Christmas films don’t help.

The precocious tyke who rides in Santa’s sleigh in The Santa Clause is so overbearing that I keep hoping Dancer and Prancer will leave him behind on an ice floe to get ripped to shreds by polar bears. The moppets in Miracle on 34th Street, Jingle All the Way, and Elf make me ask if there are no orphanages. Even Home Alone, which was entertaining enough when first released, ultimately becomes impossible to watch. Not only did it lead to Home Alone 2, Home Alone 3 and Daniel Stern’s career, but because Macaulay Culkin eventually turned into the kind of showbiz monster the entire planet should forget.

Along with my Aunt Fay, a niece in my ex-wife’s family was born on Christmas morning. Not long after she first drew breath, I began haunting video stores, buying up every copy of Dolly Parton’s A Smoky Mountain Christmas so that she would never witness the holiday depths to which Hollywood could sink. As it turns out, a great advantage of having a niece born on Dec. 25th is that Christmas babies, without exception, revile Christmas movies.

Some Respite

Of course, there are some Christmas movies that do not induce nausea or hives.

Love, Actually is redeemed by Bill Nighy’s memorable turn as a washed-up rocker trying to cash in on the holiday season. Once you get past all the bayonets, tear gas and intestines flying through the air, Joyeux Noël – an odd 2006 French flick about an improbable Yuletide truce during the First World War – is bearable enough. Then there’s the strange Un Conte de Noël, starring Catherine Deneuve. Putting Catherine Deneuve in a Christmas movie is a cheap trick because Catherine Deneuve is France’s Christmas gift to humanity. Merci beaucoup. Merci, mille fois.

Oh. Before I forget, in Un Conte de Noël Deneuve plays a woman dying of leukaemia who hates her kids. This is the French idea of Christmas cheer.

If I could give a gift to Christmas Day itself, it would be the promise that there would never be another Christmas movie. Obviously I can’t do this because Christmas Day is an abstraction that can’t receive gifts and I don’t have the power to make such a guarantee anyway.

Until then, I stick to my all-time favourite Christmas movie: Bad Santa, a vicious, uncompromising attack on the entire genre featuring Billy Bob Thornton as the grumpy old elf in an unrelentingly funny performance almost on a par with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in The Producers. A particularly acrid feature of Bad Santa is casting child actor Brett Kelly as a dim witted porker who honestly believes that Thornton’s debased department store Santa is the real McCoy. I only wish that my aunt had lived long enough to see this film; she would have loved it.

And if you’re truly in a foul mood from watching too many Christmas movies, there’s always Sarah Silverman’s holiday music video.

To you, the best of the holiday season – which is more likely to happen if you avoid holiday movies. They’re so cute you could puke.

Paul Volcker Body Slams World Bankers

2009-12-09T15:03:00.003-05:00

It wasn’t the kind of genteel discussion the world’s highest-level bankers probably expected when a large group of them gathered at a posh Surrey country house hotel in England this week for a conference under the cosy auspices of the very friendly Wall Street Journal and billed as the “Future of Finance Initiative.”

I’ve covered this sort of conference in the past and, other than the topic, they’re all basically the same: A group of mostly-men, nearly all very white, all very wealthy, typically in their late 50s and early 60s, wearing very expensive suits sitting in a comfy room somewhere plush listening to what they want to hear. The meals are lavish, golf outings plentiful, the time convivial and private jets wait at a nearby strip to ferry them home when it’s over.

So they must have been dumbstruck when Paul Volcker, head of Pres. Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and former chair of the Federal Reserve, rose to his considerable full height to deliver one body slam after another. He scolded them like they were school boys who got caught being naughty and are sloughing off what they did as a harmless prank.

First, he took after the billions in salaries and bonuses bankers in the room are still hauling in, even in the wake of the financial sector meltdown that almost ruined the global economy. Volcker fumed, “Has there been one financial leader to say this is really excessive? Wake up, gentlemen. Your response … has been inadequate.”

The colour must have drained from the assembled faces and pink may not have had time to return to the well-fed cheeks when he delivered another round-house punch. He attacked the rise of incomprehensible products such as credit default swaps, the instrument that brought down AIG and Lehman Bros., and almost took a half-dozen major banks along with it.

“I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth — one shred of evidence,” Volcker slapped.

No Real Innovation

According to a report at TimesOn-Line, no one in the audience disputed him, instead arguing that “innovation” was a necessity for bankers while claiming re-regulating the sector would sound a death knell for any new clever products. A clearly irritated Volcker shot back that the biggest innovation in the banking industry over the past 20 years was the cash machine.

Why didn’t Pres. Obama deliver this speech when he spoke to bankers on Wall St. a few months ago? Better late than never, I suppose, and bankers are slightly more likely to pay attention to Volcker than to Obama as evidenced by the fact that several major US bank CEOs turned down the invitation to hear the president speak.

Volcker went on to note that financial services in the US increased its share of value to 6.5% from 2%, demanding to know whether it’s “a reflection of your financial innovation, or just a reflection of what you’re paid?”

A mighty sigh of relief must have filled the chamber when Volcker sat down. Little did they know that another chilling contribution from Sir Deryck Maughan, a partner in private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and a former head of investment bank Salomon Bros., was awaiting them.

Sir Deryck took after bank’s risk management techniques, warning delegates that many of the flawed mathematical models underpinning the banks failed approaches are still being used, saying that the industry had not “faced up to the intellectual failure of risk management systems, which are still hardwired into many banks and many trading floors.”

He also questioned whether taxpayers should continue to underwrite many of those risks.

“There’s something wrong about large proprietary risks being taken at the risk of taxpayers,” he insisted.

Earlier Baroness Vadera, an adviser to the G20 and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during the banking crisis — warned that European lenders had yet to acknowledge the scale of their losses and bad debts, something the Obama administration has been quietly admonishing senior government officials in France and Germany about. She said, “… some of the continental banks still have (serious) issues.”

She said she continues to have nightmares about how close the banking system came to total collapse last year.

Meanwhile, US multi-billionaire investor George Soros told the group the same thing he told Congress earlier this year: Credit default swaps should be banned. The billionaire investor likened them to buying life insurance and then giving someone a licence to shoot the insured person.

A Teachable Moment

It’s too bad that Volcker’s speech wasn’t webcast into the office of every Senator and member of Congress back in Washington. They needed to hear the message as much as did the bankers.

The fact is that while many Democrats in Congress struggle to come up with some kind of meaningful re-regulation of banks and the financial services sector generally, the very same people who were rebuked by Volcker at the conference flew home to the States to lobby on behalf of keeping the status quo. Helped by Republicans and “conservative” Democrats who receive more-than-generous campaign contributions from the very institutions that sunk the economy and millions of individuals, it’s likely that Volcker’s words will be ignored at best, forgotten at worst.

If that happens, then what Pres. Obama likes to call “a teachable moment” will be lost.

Canadian PM Harper Carries On As Bush Lite.

2009-12-04T11:58:00.005-05:00

For as long as anyone can remember, Canada has been the world’s warm-hearted, generous friend.

When Mao’s millions were on the long march, Canadian physician Dr. Norman Bethune went to China to care for the sick, wounded and disabled making the trek, regardless of their politics.

Because British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery used Canadian troops as disposable cannon fodder during World War II, the nation’s soldiers liberated places like Central Italy and Holland after ferocious fighting left thousands of Canadians dead and wounded. To this day, the Dutch of all ages revere Canadians. I was in a small café in rural Holland one evening and when people learned I was from Toronto, they insisted on paying for my food and drinks, not taking no for an answer after inviting me to join them rather than eating alone. I felt like Tony Bennett at an AARP convention.

When England, France and Israel tried grabbing the Suez Canal from the Egyptians in the mid-50s, Canada’s then-Prime Minister Lester Pearson rushed to the UN and worked out a peaceful end to the disaster. Blue helmeted Canadian peace keepers became a welcomed site in war-torn nations everywhere since then.

All during the Bush years, countless Americans pasted Canadian flag decals on their luggage or backpacks and wore the Maple Leaf flag in their lapel when travelling the world ‘lest they be taunted, tormented or worse as if they were Yanks, even in friendly nations. No one hates Canada.

But Stephen Harper, prime minister of a minority Canadian government since February, 2006, is doing his Bushian best to change this.

Shortcomings

Harper is such a reactionary, so Neanderthal in his outlook, beliefs and world view that he makes Mike Huckabee seem qualified to lead MoveOn.org by comparison.

If you’ve never seen a picture of Harper, he’s the guy at the far end of the line of world leaders at G8 summits, usually wearing an ill-fitting, tan sports jacket and looking so out of place, he seems like the bookkeeper who came to do the accounts, stumbled into the wrong room by mistake and ended up in the photo before anyone realised he was there.

Canadians, or at least those who don’t live in Alberta which is Harper’s home and political base, are well aware of his many shortcomings.

For example, as the world economy collapsed last year, he refused to even consider a stimulus package until the three main opposition parties in Parliament – Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois – threatened to gang up and topple his minority government. An election was avoided only because Harper reluctantly supported a robust bill to help relieve the hideous problems facing Canadians. One result is that Canada now owns about 5% of GM, which has several large factories in Ontario and saving thousands of jobs. While many of its people are still struggling, Canada seems to be inching out of the Great Recession more easily than the US, no thanks to Harper’s darkly distorted ideology and widely discredited view of the role of government.

Extreme Naiveté

Like his role model and folk hero George W. Bush, Harper is busy doing as much damage to Canada’s world role as he is to its long tradition of providing a functional social safety net.

Just this week, in a move totally out of character for China – especially for senior government officials – as Harper stepped off his government green Boeing 757 jet at Beijing’s Capitol Airport, he was pointedly and publicly rebuked by both its premier and president for not visiting the country sooner. After the US, China is one of Canada’s largest trading partners and huge numbers of Chinese live here: Toronto has the largest Chinese community outside of Asia and Vancouver is home to the second-largest. The two countries have been strategically important to each other since the early 1960s.

“For some reason, Harper thinks he doesn’t like China, if he thinks about it at all,” a career foreign service officer with decades of experience dealing with the country told me. Although not authorised to speak publicly, I’ve known and trusted this source since 1993 when I made the first of nearly a dozen trips to Beijing, Shanghai and other provinces.

“We’ve been after the (Prime Minister’s Office) to schedule a trip for as long as Harper has been PM,” he continued. “The Chinese embassy here suggested a number of dates and became insulted when Harper’s people kept saying ‘no’.

“It was increasingly embarrassing to both sides, which is why (prime minister) Wen Jia Bao and (president) President Hu Jin Tao both gave him a polite but very public slap when he arrived in Beijing. Anyone who knows Chinese culture grasped that they are really pissed.”

Two other officials in the foreign affairs ministry essentially confirmed the information.

“I don’t know if he (Harper) is extremely naïve or doesn’t like Chinese food or it’s something else,” one of them complained. “It was especially insulting to the Chinese that he made several official trips to Asia since taking office but wouldn’t stop for a day or two in China.”

“In working with the people around Harper, I get the feeling they don’t grasp the diplomatic, business and foreign policy importance of China to Canada,” the third stated in exasperation.

By comparison, each of Harper’s three predecessors made countless trips to China. Jean Chrétien went so often when he was Prime Minister, insiders jokingly wondered if he was hiding a second family in Beijing.

It Gets Worse

As if the Beijing photo-op wasn’t personally embarrassing enough, his nation chastised by an old friend, other Harper foreign policy disasters lie scattered around the world.

Last week, a special Parliamentary committee on Afghanistan – where Canadian troops have been fighting since the beginning – was stunned when a senior intelligence officer testified that insurgents captured by Canadian forces were tortured when they were turned over to the Afghan government. Even more shocking, Richard Colvin revealed that during his 18 months stationed in Kabul, cabinet ministers in Harper’s government knew it was happening.

Colvin directly contradicted three years of assurances by Harper that there was no credible evidence prisoners handed over to local authorities were tortured.

Colvin said the sweeping roundups of prisoners – many of them innocent by-standers – and their subsequent torture drove a wedge between Canada and the people of Kandahar where most Canadian troops are stationed, destroying much of the good will soldiers died to achieve.

"In my judgment, (our) complicity in torture turned local people against us," Colvin told a hushed room, where opposition MPs sat slack jawed and open-mouthed at what they were hearing.

"According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured. For interrogators in Kandahar, it was standard operating procedure,” Colvin insisted.

Colvin said he remains concerned because Canada continues to hand over its prisoners to the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's notorious intelligence service.

While the Harper government first denied the claim, within days Foreign Minister Peter McKay admitted Colvin’s testimony was true but only after memos incriminating the government were leaked.

Same At Gitmo

Harper is equally indifferent about a Canadian citizen detained for years at Guantanamo Bay.

Omar Khadr was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan by Americans and shipped to Gitmo where a secret video of him begging for help from someone he thought was a diplomat but was really an intelligence officer was leaked. Khadr has told officials he was a soldier only because his father, now living in Pakistan, threatened to kill him if he didn’t. Evidence indicates that Khadr hadn’t shot or killed any US forces, as his original detention alleged, and now the US wants to send him home.

But Harper is blocking it, forcing the Supreme Court of Canada to intervene and agree to hear the case. Nothing in Canadian law allows the government to refuse entry to a citizen but Harper doesn’t want the boy – who’s now 22 – to be reunited with his family.

O, Canada. Stephen Harper stands on guard for who?

We Can’t “Train” Our Way Out Of Afghanistan

2009-12-01T08:54:00.002-05:00

According to a BBC news report, last week in Kabul “an American service member and an Afghan police officer got into an argument because the American was drinking water in front of the Afghan police, who are not eating or drinking … because of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan … (The policeman) shot the American and seriously wounded him, while other American troops responded by seriously wounding the (policeman).”

This depressing vignette spotlights the problem for American troops in Afghanistan. And it shows the problems Afghans have with ignorant foreigners whose boorish insensitivity would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.

A perceptive American military officer told The Washington Post that “Having US troops enforcing martial law where they don’t understand the people or speak the language — this is a recipe for disaster.” Quite so, although using the phrase “martial law” is a bit disconcerting.

The same applies to training the Afghan army and police, a key component of Pres. Obama’s escalation. Training and “mentoring” of Afghan troops and police by Americans – lush with shades of Vietnam-era condescension – won’t work and we can’t “train” our way out of the country.

Sounds Like “Stripes”

To begin with, along with the US Army, training is conducted by different nations, none of which use similar methods. Indeed, NATO and troops from other nations don’t have compatible rules of engagement, communications or logistics systems, equipment, command structures or domestic political pressures. NATO and the “International Security Assistance Force” have some 65,000 troops there. About half are American, but more than 30,000 other US troops operate under entirely US command, having nothing to do with NATO.

To say this is fucked-up is being polite. Here are the lordly superior nations of the West, intent on bringing law, order and clean government to Afghanistan – a land where none of the three has ever existed – and they do not have a single headquarters responsible for commanding all military operations.

If a young captain at West Point proposed such a structure in a term paper, he would flunk out of the academy. It all sounds like a scene from the Bill Murray and Harold Ramis film, Stripes. Except Stripes was a comedy and we’re talking about the real world.

There is no overall Mission Statement for the 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. As the war intensifies, it is likely that national contingents now operating in comparatively safe areas will be subjected to action by warlords, Taliban, drug barons and other criminal thugs. If this happens – and we’re beginning to see some of it already in the previously peaceful north – there will be even more chaos.

Fiasco Looms

The US says that training soldiers is the responsibility of the Afghan army with our assistance. True, as far as it goes. But at least six countries are involved in training Afghans, a surefire recipe for confusion. So last April, realising that the training process had failed, NATO announced it would create a Training Mission with “a single commander for both the US-led Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan and the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan.”

Good luck trying, but it won’t work. What is needed is a stand-alone training system that could be designed in detail by a competent major in about a week.

One reason the US Army is so good is because all recruits are functionally literate and speak English, along with whatever other language they may know. The dedication and ingenuity of their instructors is utterly amazing. The logistics system is, for the most part, staggeringly efficient. A former Army drill sergeant once told me about one of his fresh-faced recruits with size 16 feet who showed up at basic training. The Army doesn’t stock size 16 boots so the quartermaster phoned the boot supplier; two pairs arrived the next day.

Afghanistan doesn’t have supply lines efficient enough to deliver food around the country, let alone a constant stream of goods and ammunition to troops in remote outposts.

Beyond supplies, it takes at least a year to produce a reasonably efficient soldier — and that’s with an almost perfect system. It would be criminal to ask a soldier to hazard his or her life before they were competent.

But Afghan army training is only 10 weeks, and 90% of recruits are illiterate. Worse, they seldom speak the same language as either their peers or the foreigners instructing them. Afghan instructors are keen but barely effective. US and other foreign instructors may be good but most are depressingly ignorant of Afghanistan’s language, culture and customs. Moreover, with a desertion rate of 25%, the country’s troops and police have a turnover rate that would cripple even the best training regimen.

Fighters Diverted To Training

It’s reported that, as part of Obama’s surge, one brigade of the 82nd Airborne will be deployed to serve as trainers. But the 82nd Airborne is a regular Army brigade trained hard and tough to fight; unit members are not trained to train.

What a farce.

The training system in Afghanistan won’t work, nor will the absurdly complex new command arrangements being put in place. For example, there will be a “new ISAF Upper Command Structure, (which) will consist of a higher operational Headquarters, ISAF HQ commanded by a 4-star General, and a subordinate 3-star HQ called ISAF Joint Command (IJC) HQ. Both will be located in Kabul …” And so on.

In a marvellous piece of military speak, another bulletin announces that “COMIC-J (emphasis mine) will be exclusively a NATO Commander, as opposed to COMNTM-A who will be double-hatted as NATO/ISAF Commander and Commander of the US-led Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A).”

COMIC? I couldn’t make it up. But it’s all too real, if barely believable.

Heaven help Afghanistan, our soldiers sent to fight and die there for no good reason, and the rest of us.

UPDATE 8: Goofy Sarah Gets Punked - Again

2009-11-30T14:20:00.006-05:00

Once again, Sarah Palin got punked by a comedian.

This time, "reporter" Marg Delahunty - played by Mary Walsh - of Canada's long-running social and political satire show This Hour Has 22 Minutes tries to interview Sarah Palin at a book signing in Ohio.

So she's advocating repealing the "socialist" Canadian healthcare system and replacing it with a system that works so well in the US?

Hey, Sarah: Donchaknow your plane flies over Canada on the way to Wasilla?

h/t to Denis Campbell at The UK Progressive.

Obama’s Afghan Box Canyon

2009-11-30T09:35:00.004-05:00

Anyone who’s been to Afghanistan knows that its eastern mountains bordering Pakistan are filled with countless box canyons from which the only way out is the same way you came in. They’re deadly – Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire in this nightmarish geography – because it’s easy for insurgents to rain RPGs, mortars and small arms fire down on soldiers who never see what’s coming or from where it’s coming.

Thanks to George Bush’s seven years of neglect, Pres. Obama finds himself in just such a deadly box canyon in Afghanistan, militarily, politically and financially. Tomorrow night, he’ll lay out a strategy to do the nearly impossible: Outline a way out without getting out or getting trapped.

Carefully leaked snippets of what he’ll say at West Point are telegraphing that he won’t agree that the best way out of Afghanistan is to leave. So, we’re likely to hear some new version of the old version of the story.

Beyond Bush, a good measure of Obama’s dilemma is that someone high up in the Pentagon or working on Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s staff in Kabul leaked his troop proposals to The New York Times and other reporters and then gave a public speech in London touting his views while the president was still forming an overall strategy; the speech earned the general a face-to-face dressing down from Obama on Air Force One as it sat on the ramp in Copenhagen after the president’s appearance at the Olympic Selection Committee. McChrystal got off easy because Harry Truman fired Douglas Macarthur for doing pretty much the same thing over Korea.

A combination of the leaked memo and McChrystal’s telling the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that a scaled down policy favoured by Vice President Joe Biden would lead to "Chaos-istan" narrowed Obama’s options. It gave Republicans a chance to scream “Listen to your general!” while allowing the left to accuse the president of opening the door to another Vietnam quagmire.

Even Bill Moyers – who was present at the creation of Lyndon Johnson’s mess – is expressing strong reservations. Besides announcing his retirement, Moyers devoted an entire Journal episode a week ago to a detailed recounting of how LBJ spent more time “listening to his generals” than to thoughtful people such as Senators William Fulbright and Richard Russell or newspaper publisher John Knight who, while recognising the domestic political risks, were telling the president Vietnam was a mistake, we should get out because Americans would be fighting for a decade and 50,000 soldiers would be killed.

How sadly prescient Fulbright, Russell, Knight, Sen. Wayne Morse and others were in 1965.

Military Debacle

As Danny Schechter wrote at Media Matters a few days after Moyer’s broadcast his cautionary warning, “The parallels with the present day, and the upcoming decision by President Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan, are unmistakable and undeniable.”

As did LBJ in 1965, today the words “winning” and “finishing the job” and “fighting terrorists” creep into nearly every discussion of Afghanistan. Politicians, so-called military experts, reporters, pundits, talking heads, Dick Cheney, and loudmouth idiots insist upon looking at the war through a cracked prism, one that sees Bullets Over Broadway as the only possible, logical outcome if we don’t throw everything we’ve got into a fight in Khandahar.

The fact is, there’s a military debacle awaiting Obama behind every boulder.

“Whether Obama can 'finish the job' in Afghanistan depends on what he defines the job as,” Juan Cole wrote at Informed Comment, his authoritative blog on the Middle East and South Asia. Cole continues, “If it is to build a 21st century Afghan state and crush the Taliban and other Muslim political movements in the Pashtun areas, then I am extremely skeptical. If it is to prop up a shaky … Afghan government and military before pulling out, then his odds of success, while still bad, do rise.”

Pres. Obama will reportedly send 4,000 military trainers as part of the escalation. He could send 40,000 and it wouldn’t make any difference. There are widely published reports that desertion rates in the Afghan army runs at 25% and illiteracy rates among soldiers is roughly 90%.

How can a soldier be taught to stand and fight when they can’t read the manual that explains how to load a magazine cartridge into their rifle or clean the damn thing?

Moreover, soldier’s pay is low: Much lower than the $5 a day farmers, who are mostly non-political but whose families are starving, get paid by various insurgents for planting a roadside bomb or two before disappearing into the countryside. And, for the most part, working part-time for an insurgent group is a whole lot safer than being a semi-trained, illiterate, uniformed solider going into battle under corrupt leadership.

Regardless of the President’s strategy, there is disaster awaiting American, Canadian and NATO troops. Just ask Alexander the Great. Genghis Khan. The British. The Soviets.

Political Nightmare

There could be as much of a disaster awaiting Obama at home, where he hasn’t come across as fighting for serious health care reform, more interested in getting one or two Republican votes than in fulfilling a major campaign promise.

“It is extremely dangerous for him to go on alienating his base, which wants peace and prosperity,” Dr. Cole predicts, “with policies that make rightwing Republicans happy – coddling bankers in a jobless recovery and escalating an eight-year-old, increasingly unpopular war. The rightwing Republicans will vote for these in Congress but blame Obama for them, and benefit from Democratic disillusionment in 2012.”

Obama is in the same box canyon politically as he is militarily.

If he doesn’t send more troops, the deadly stalemate will continue and the GOP will have an election issue that could draw independents and moderate Republicans back into the fold.

If he sends more men and women to fight and die in Afghanistan, he won’t have any greater success at stabilising the country yet many Democrats and most progressives will feel betrayed again. Although Obama may enjoy a brief up-tick in poll numbers after his talk, as soon as larger numbers of American bodies come home in flag-draped coffins, and Walter Reed fills up again with the damaged bodies and minds of soldiers whose lives have been ruined, the country will turn against what it thought, in November, 2009, was a good idea.

Blank Checks

Even worse, the GOP will seize on the cost of escalating the war – which is something like $1-million per soldier per year – as an excuse to cut much-needed social programs at home: The public option, education, jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, converting to a greener economy, dealing with climate change, all will suffer as a result.

Moreover, fiscally conservative Democrats in Congress – of which there are far too many – will join in, effectively blocking what sound economists such as UC-Berkeley’s Dr. Robert Reich and Princeton’s Nobel Prize winning Dr. Paul Krugman – among many others – demonstrate is a much-needed additional stimulus to bring down the nation’s unholy unemployment and underemployment numbers, noting that current debt levels can be dealt with later because low bond rates show the market isn’t worried about how much the US owes.

As recently as Monday morning, Krugman wrote in his New York Times column a major new jobs programme is needed, warning that while “(a)ll of this would cost money, probably several hundred billion dollars … (b)ut has to be weighed against the high cost of inaction in the face of a social and economic emergency.”

The question is whether Congress would support such a programme. The House might but it’s likely to get bottled up in the Senate – along with nearly 1,000 other measures the House passed this year but the Upper House has yet to discuss.

Meanwhile, Obama is stuck trying to find his way out of a box canyon that, first, Bush’s neo-cons and, more recently, Gen. McChrystal led him into without getting another 3,000-to-5,000 Americans killed as needed programmes at home go wanting.

The Spirit Of Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T15:58:00.002-05:00

Even after 19 years of living in Canada, it seems odd not to be gorging myself on a food fest the last Thursday in November at the start of a four day holiday.

Fortunately, Wednesday Addams reminds all of us of the true meaning and history of Thanksgiving.

h/t to Paul Krugman

Like Leaves, Life Always Drifts Back To Earth

2009-11-23T08:27:00.007-05:00

By this time last November, I’d already wrenched my back shovelling. Twice. But this year, November in Toronto feels like May. Of course, May felt like March and August like late October so maybe it’s all just evening out.

It’s been in the 50s and 60s – called “double digits” in Canada, which insists on using the totally unfathomable Celsius thermometer – and sunny since Halloween. Knowing that such warm weather this late is like living on borrowed time, my dog and I are taking full advantage, spending afternoons in a nearby off-the-leash park. Prince, a Golden Retriever I adopted a few years ago, romps, stomps and rock-n-rolls with assorted friends – some familiar, some new, but to dogs it doesn’t make any difference and they greet all comers without prejudice. Finally, he hauls his tail over to where I’m sitting on a bench in the sun and lays down, panting, smiling and utterly exhausted.

He rests there contentedly, his white fur flecked with red and orange and brown bits of dried leaves, looking up at me every so often as if saying, “Thanks, pop, that was way too much fun!” If a buddy dashes over for more, all Prince has the energy to do is roll on his back, legs flailing at the air while making gentle, throaty sounds of joy as he plays mouth games with the other pooch. When the dog runs off to find a more active and eager buddy, Prince is content to let them go. At nine, he knows his limits; once he lies down, that’s it.

I know mine, as well, and it’s time for me to lie down.

I know this because, along with incredible weather, November brought me both a birthday and a report from the latest round of medical tests I underwent that had been administered by a long line of anonymous Torquemada’s dressed in identical white coats and pale blue scrubs some 10 days earlier. My cancer is back for a return engagement.

I’ve decided not to undergo more treatment. After I’ve-lost-track of how many rounds of chemo and radiation, plus a bit of surgery stuck in there someplace, enough’s enough. After thinking about it seriously, I’m not going to submit to months of feeling lousy – I mean really lousy – during treatment again only to be told six months later I need more treatment. I’ve heard “… and this should take care of it” one too many times to believe it anymore.

Naturally, my oncologist was beside himself and sent me off to see a hospital social worker. It was a pleasant enough exchange but not so pleasant I want to have another one. I did talk about this at length with my psychiatrist, who sometimes calls himself Flapping Lips, and while urging me to reconsider, he admits he doesn’t know what he’d do if he were in my situation and had lived my life.

I’ve had a great time during big chunks of that life.

When I was only seven, Warren Spahn taught me how to throw a baseball in the outfield grass at the old Milwaukee County Stadium before a Braves’ game. I couldn’t have learned from anyone better: Spahn went on to win more games than any left-handed pitcher in Major League history – a record he still holds today, decades after he retired from the game – and is in the Hall of Fame.

At one time or another, my work took me all over the world. I’ve been to all of Western Europe, much of Eastern Europe, China and Asia, and parts of Africa and South America. I've eaten dinner in the Eiffel Tower, stood in Red Square, played with a lion cub in a South African game preserve, walked on the Great Wall, watched jade traders at a street corner market on a Kowloon backstreet in Hong Kong, seen the sun rise on Bali and set over Phuket. There’s an elegant Chinese expression that, translated inelegantly, says "The same man does not return from a journey as the one who departed on it." I think it is true of all types of journeys and not just those involving travel.

I’ve lived in six great cities in two countries, absorbing bits of each along the way ranging from how I pronounce some words to a more expansive view of the world, and life, and me.

I’ve enjoyed five fairly distinct and generally successful careers; along the way, I was employed by only one place that I detested so thoroughly I couldn’t wait to get out.

I’ve met four US presidents, one in the Oval Office, and two Canadian Prime Ministers. I spent some fascinating time with two different men who played major roles in changing the face of Eastern Europe, and several days with a Chinese premier who turned his nation into the coming economic powerhouse of the 21st century before retiring. I’ve dined with authors, artists, playwrights, actors and artisans.

I’ve also met and written about the downtrodden, the helpless, the throwaway people who lost when life rolled the dice for them. In a few cases, what I wrote brought them to the attention of others who were able to help them turn things around, if even just a bit and for a little while.

I’ve seen the positive glow of pride and self-accomplishment that came into the eyes of more than two dozen adult illiterates I helped learn to read for the first time in their life.

And, since I fancy myself something of a writer, I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with a number of them, often on airplanes and typically by accident.

I met Hunter Thompson just this way: The computer assigned us adjacent seats. I seem to be blessed with a peculiar kind of karma with airlines; flights are usually late and the service minimalist, but computers keep plunking me next to wonderful writers. Besides Thompson, over the years I’ve sat next to David Cornwall - John Le Carre - on a flight from London to Paris, Jimmy Breslin on the Boston-New York shuttle and Margaret Atwood from Toronto to somewhere, among others. All were engaging travel companions.

(Of course, it also works the other way ‘round: On a dreadfully long, non-stop flight to Tokyo from Toronto, I endured 14 hours next to an ageing academic who had the pungent aroma of old cheddar cheese and even older moth-balls about him. He had just published a scholarly article on Nietzsche. The premise, he explained in excruciating detail as we crossed the Pacific, was that the brooding, ominous German philosopher’s ideas still can be found underlying many mainstream political theories. Oh, good: The Boys From Brazil are alive and well and having fun in capitals everywhere.)

I’ve covered one war, two major civil insurrections over war, race and poverty in America during the late 60s and early 70s, and three presidential campaigns that ended up being turning points in American history.

A raft of activists, actresses, models, centrefolds, musicians and an actual heiress called me boyfriend at one time or another. So have writers, businesswomen, scholars, shop girls, secretaries, a couple of lawyers and a few single moms.

Ten dogs and one cat have graciously allowed me to share my home and life with them.

On the other hand, parts of my life were overwhelming and deeply disappointing.

None was more so than my sister dying 10 years ago. As hard as it can be to lose parents, one has time to prepare if they live their three score and 10 or more. I saw mine age, lose the ability to do things for themselves that they always took for granted, attended funerals for their friends. But there was no way prepare for watching Janice go from healthy to dead in 11 weeks, of brain cancer. Her loss affected me profoundly, and still does in some ways.

There was a pair of short, disastrous marriages; countless ill-starred, putative relationships with women; one suicide attempt. I was 16 and a sophomore at university, thwarted only because Mr. Donaldson – our retired neighbour across the alley – happened to be awake at two or three o’clock that morning and saw me go into the garage behind our house on Logan Avenue. He was sitting in his darkened kitchen having coffee. Who drinks coffee at three ayem if they’re not working the night shift?

I don’t regret not having children but I do regret never hearing a woman say “I love you” to me and actually mean it. Once, it would have been nice.

I’ve made horrid choices in women, to the point where, sometime in the early 1990s, a friend from my Chicago days recommended that “the next time you meet someone who’s interested in you, run away!” It took another 10 years but I finally realised she was correct and stopped dating altogether. I’m not sure what took so long; maybe it’s living proof of the triumph of hope over experience. Experience finally won.

Experience with my ex-wives contributed but only partly. There also was Elise, the world’s best juggler who managed to hide her fiancé from me - and, I assume, me from her intended - until a week before her wedding; Louisa, the wacky wop; Jacquelyn, the drunken skater; Barbara, the dark creature from hell; Amanda, the bi-coastal bi-sexual who had a boyfriend in New York (me) and a girlfriend in LA; Grace, who was anything but; Holly and Riba and Sera, all of whom thought men were simply gold cards attached to a life support system.

And people wonder why I haven’t asked anyone out for so much a glass of wine since 2003.

Or why I feel disconnected from the world, especially now as my medical situation stares at me blankly, an expressionless reality that has more fight left in it than I have remaining in me.

So it goes.

Death will be patient, if I let it. No oncologist worth the Hippocratic oath will tell a cancer patient how much time they have left because, frankly, they don’t know and the really good ones admit they don’t know. Cancer is an intelligent and clever disease, capable of thwarting brilliant human talent and crackling machines worth millions of dollars. In my case, I’m told, one cell hiding somewhere in my body, invisible to even the most sophisticated of diagnostic tools, is sitting there throwing off cancerous cells that go directly to my colon.

Thus, should I undergo yet another round of debilitating chemo and enervating radiation, that hidden, little cell will lay in wait in some dark, moist place inside me until I’m pronounced “clear” and then start its dirty task all over again.

There doesn’t seem to be much point in playing medicine’s game another time.

Sorry to tell you this Chuck Grassley and Sarah Palin and Virginia Fox and Glenn Beck and the rest of the Teabaggers and people who think the richest nation on earth is doing just fine having one-third of its population uninsured or underinsured: The only death panel is the one inside each of us.

I’ll keep working and writing as much and as well as I can for as long as I can. When I think the time has come, then Prince, Sparky – my 10 year old cat of unknown and highly suspect origins – and I will cross the Rainbow Bridge and go together into the great void, returning to cosmic dust.

This appeared originally at QOR, a site that carries my work and whose contributors discuss culture, and modern life and living in words, images and music.

The Remake Of Pelham 1-2-3: Why So Many Movies Today Are So Lousy

2009-11-21T16:13:00.003-05:00

I just saw The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 remake so I could better understand the inevitable sequel, The Putting Back of Pelham 1-2-3 Right Where It Belongs, and to compare it with the 1974 original, which spelled out the numbers in the title because audiences had longer attention spans back then.

The original, done in the pit of New-York-as-Hell era of filmmaking, was a crackling film packed with sturdy performances: Walter Matthau as the Bassett Hound subway dispatcher who deals with the hijackers; Robert Shaw as a steely-nerved soldier of fortune; Lee Wallace as a whiny, flu-plagued Mayor Ed Koch. But the real star was New York: Grim, shabby, broken, peeling. It looked like it smelled of uncollected garbage and bum’s socks.

Yet the movie was great. Everyone loves a crisp heist-and-caper flick, especially when you don’t know how the crooks will escape – or get caught. Add seasoned actors who knew how to inhabit a role and a director who lets the story tell the story instead of some jacked-up FX computer monkey doing it in the edit suite, and you had a superb, edgy film.

The remake is noisy, hyperactive, bright and incessantly vulgar.

We know the bad guy is bad ‘cause he shouts "Fucker!" frequently and "Motherfucker!" even more often. No, hold on; the good guys say that, too. Well, the bad guy is bad because he's an unhinged killer with a gripe, which is much more theatrical than Robert Shaw's deadly menace. With John Travolta, you know you're getting the former heart-throb, greased-up dance master, in his "I love being bad" persona first displayed in Pulp Fiction. After only a few scenes, we look forward to his death. You wanted Robert Shaw to get caught; you want Travolta to get shoved under a train.

But that's just part of the horror. Tony Scott is a hyperactive director who cannot hold a shot anymore than a frat boy can hold liquor; his enthusiasm sloshes and staggers and gets the spins, hurls left and right and up and down, and bears no resemblance to reality.

It exhausts, it annoys. It seems afraid to do anything else. By comparison, Transformers is The Sorrow and the Pity.

I just curled up in a ball and waited for the punches to stop.

UDPATE 7: Reviewing Goofy Sarah’s Goofy Book

2009-11-16T10:54:00.003-05:00

Thanks to a friend at an on-line book seller, on Friday morning a courier delivered a preview copy of Going Rogue, Sarah Palin’s latest gyration in her bizarre, on-going odyssey into fringe folk-lore, self-promotion, and an increasingly pathological need to keep yelling “Look at me! Look at me!” like a whiny eight year old trying to get attention in a room full of grown-ups.

“If anyone else had written this,” read a note from my friend that I found in the envelope, “they’d be shipped off to a shrink and put on heavy meds. Instead, Palin is getting rich. Life’s not fair!”

The book is as unevenly written and, in parts, mysteriously unfathomable as Palin herself – despite having wordsmithing help from a sub-editor of an evangelical religious magazine. For example, the very first paragraph of the book includes a sentence declaring, “I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier.”

Huh? I hope publisher Harper-Collins didn’t pay ghost-writer Lynn Vincent much money for whatever it is Vincent did with Palin’s text.

More to the point, beyond turning on the same McCain campaign that plucked her from obscurity and propelled her to the infamy that led to a $5-million advance for her memoirs, Going Rogue reinforces the well-earned perception of The Wicked Witch of Wasilla as so devoutly anti-intellectual, so thoroughly uncurious about the world, and so totally convinced that the fake blue collar image of her life means she knows all there is to know and only God knows all the rest, as to make her popularity among the remains of the Republican Party truly frightening.

Sadly, the book only increases her appeal to that very base of the shrinking GOP while leaving moderate Republicans, independents and anyone else who actually thinks about things out in the Alaskan cold.

Payback Time

Aside from the snippets of her life in Alaska – much of it true, some of it clearly part of the carefully-crafted storyline created about her by Palin’s handlers in the McCain campaign – the book is mostly a loosely-linked chain of self-aggrandizing, petulant slams at McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt and a handful of other professional pols who were trying to get their ticket elected against very long odds.

She comes across as an eager player in a blame game – something she’s been doing ever since high school, according to published accounts of people who’ve known her since her prom queen days.

Equally important, she polishes her campaign persona of “hockey mom” triviality. She confesses to being unfamiliar with the Middle East, the Iraq war, Afghanistan or Islamic politics. “I knew the history of the conflict,” she writes at one point, “to the extent that most Americans did.”

Oh? Better tell that to Rush Limbaugh, who claims Going Rogue is one of the best policy books he’s ever read. I gather this means what it implies: He doesn’t read many policy books.

And, anyway, “most Americans” don’t want to be vice president of the United States and aren’t manoeuvring to become a major party’s nominee for president next time around.

Just as astonishing, Palin argues without explanation that “there’s no better training ground for politics than motherhood.”

Anti-Everything

Palin writes that she and Todd are perfect to represent America’s Joe Six-Packs because that’s who they are themselves.

“We know what it’s like to be on a tight budget and wonder how we’re going to pay for our own health care, let alone college tuition,” she boasts. “We know what it’s like to work union jobs ... We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans, could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington, D.C.”

One problem: The very economic policies she touts in the book, at her Facebook page, when she Twitters little nothings in the ears of her followers, and on the stump during the campaign have been killing union jobs and ordinary Americans since the days of Ronald Reagan.

Elsewhere, she writes about creationism, proudly confessing that she doesn’t hold truck with “the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” She knows as much about anthropology as she knows about the Middle East: Monkeys climbed into trees first, before learning to walk upright. Oh, and studies have shown that nearly all primates are “thinking, loving beings.”

But to Palin, God is in charge of everything in her life, a sort of personal concierge. “My life is in His hands,” she testifies. “I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”

I doubt whether Palin knows it, but that statement is the best argument I’ve read to support atheism. Surely, a caring, loving, all-knowing and all-seeing God would never give a Sarah Palin such a platform so there's almost a prima facie case that a God doesn't exist.

RedState.com’s Erick Erickson’s Head Officially Explodes

2009-11-14T08:47:00.002-05:00

It was bound to happen sooner or later to poor Erick Erickson.

He runs the right-wing fringe website RedState.com and, after 10 months of increasingly pulsating throbs like a character in an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon with every move the Obama Administration has made, Friday morning his head absolutely exploded.

Why?

Because the Obama Administration has the audacity to return America to the rule of law abandoned by George Bush, Dick Cheney and their henchmen. Instead of a kangaroo court at Gitmo, the Justice Dept. will have Khalid Sheik Mohammad and four co-defendants in New York standing trial in federal court on terrorism charges relating to his role in planning and plotting 9/11.

In a frantic, fear-mongering, mass e-mail sent Friday morning, Erickson screams out his warning:

“In that trial, the terrorist will get all the rights afforded an American citizen in a criminal trial, (emphasis his) including the right to a fair trial, the right to a taxpayer funded attorney, the right to review all the evidence against him, potentially including classified intelligence matters, the right to exclude evidence against him including, potentially, any confession obtained through enhanced interrogation techniques, etc.”

In other words, Erickson is aghast that an American president will use the American legal system and American rules of evidence to prosecute people who broke American laws.

In RedState’s view, apparently, Mohammad should have an unfair trail governed by no lawyers representing him, keeping secret evidence against KSM so it can’t be used in his defence, and prosecutors should use information obtained through torture.

That’s the true American way, according to this goofball who seems to have as solid an understanding of the Constitution, US laws and treaties, as those great legal scholars from the Bush era, John Yoo and Jay Bybee.

Uhm, I remember seeing videos of Osama bin Laden and several al-Qaeda spokesmen publicly stating after Sept. 11 that the group wants to destroy everything America stands for. Well, it seems Erickson is all in favour of letting the terrorists have their way, going so far as to demand Washington finish the job those four groups of highjackers started by destroying the rule of law.

Shouting Not To Be Heard

Before urging recipients to call members of Congress to object to bringing KSM or any of his cohorts to the US, Erickson dips into the bizarre.

“At best, this will be a show trial fit not for the American Republic, but a third world kleptocratic totalitarian regime. At worse, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will gain access to classified material he can then leak to other terrorists while New York yet again becomes a target for terrorists. We have already had occasions in this country where terrorists' sympathetic lawyers have conveyed information, orders, and plans to other terrorists.”

Not only does Erickson not understand the principles underlying America and its system of laws, he’s busy trying to rewrite history.

The Gitmo tribunals sent up by Donald Rumsfeld at the urging of Dick Cheney met the very definition of “show trial.” Clearly, Erickson hasn’t read much history of the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1930s, Josef Stalin’s frequent purges kidnapped hapless victims before dragging them in front of rigged courts after being tortured in the Lubyanka’s cellars. For good measure, they could neither see any evidence against them, question state witnesses or mount an actual defence before being either shot or sent to die in Siberian forced labour camps.

This is what Erickson thinks the US should emulate?

While I’m sure that calling Obama’s decision one that would be made in a “third world kleptocratic totalitarian regime” managed to rouse his readers – if they know what he meant – Erickson should have checked dictonary.com before using such big words. There are two definitions:

Klep-toc-ra-cy – [klep-tok-ruh-see]
noun, plural -cies

A government or state in which those in power exploit national resources and steal; rule by a thief or thieves.

A government characterized by rampant greed and corruption.

While this sort of behaviour was not just tolerated but rampant during the Bush years – in Washington, on Wall St., at outfits like Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater, and among defence contractors – so far, Pres. Obama hasn’t shown much tolerance for thievery.

Instead, he and the Democratic Congress increased spending for veterans by the largest amount in history. He’s working to bring health care to the one-quarter of the population who are either uninsured or underinsured and impose some semblance of rules on the health insurance cartel. He’s urging Congress to pass legislation that will allow workers to vote in secret ballots to form a union without management peering over their shoulders taking notes and naming names. He’s sort-of started cracking down on kleptocratic defense contractors who stole billions from the Treasury during Bush’s reign of error. Democrats in Washington are trying to re-impose rules on a resistant financial services industry rules to both level the playing field and give consumers a break.

Who’s Taking A Leak?

Finally, Erickson has his boxers all in a bunch because, he insists, a trial will make New York a target for more terrorist attacks and because KSM will see classified evidence that he will then leak to other terrorists.

Alas, dear Erick sees only red when the world is a bit more shaded than he wants to admit.

For openers, Erickson out-does even his own wing of the Republican Party in hyperbole by declaring there have been “occasions” – which was once – when “terrorists' sympathetic lawyers have conveyed information, orders, and plans to other terrorists.” Actually, one lawyer passed a personal message to an acquaintance of a defendant she was representing. No information. No secrets. No plans. And there was no evidence that the person who received the note was a terrorist, only that they happened to be of Middle Eastern origin and a Moslem.

Oh, silly me. In Erickson’s world that’s a prima facie argument they were a terrorist.

If RedState and the other right-wing grandstanders who shoved their way in front of TV cameras Friday afternoon are so concerned about leaks, like the self-promoting Joe Lieberman, why don’t they stick a sock in the mouth of Rep. Pete Hoekstra who gives away intelligence every time he grabs his BlackBerry and sends out a Twitter message? Especially since Hoekstra is the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

Why does Erick Erickson hate America so much?

Billionaires Serenade Michelle Bachman’s Insane Capitol Rally

2009-11-07T14:38:00.003-05:00

Our favourite group of indolent n’er do wells, Billionaires For Wealthcare, showed up at Michelle Bachman’s rally on the steps of the Capitol last week to serenade the crowd. Then, they marched into the halls of Congress itself to sing for Senators – you can spot John Kerry in the crowd – Representatives and staffers eating lunch.

In between songs, the group stood in the crowd shouting "Stock options, yes! Public option, no!"

To Hell And Beck

2009-11-07T09:35:00.002-05:00

We’ll take as a given that Glenn Beck is crazy, in the same league as Michelle Bachman and people who show up at police stations wearing aluminium foil hats demanding the cops make Martians stop beaming radio signals into their head.

Who besides Beck would invite PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk on television to join him in criticising Nobel Prize winning former Vice President Al Gore for only cutting back on the amount of meat he eats, not eliminating it from his diet entirely, and then using this as the basis for lashing out at Gore’s new book, Our Choice?

Who other than His Nuttiness would praise nurses for their knowledge, care and understanding when they tended to him after he was hospitalised following botched hemorrhoid surgery only to turn on them a year later for supporting health care reform so people who don’t have Fox News’ lush group plan can get insurance?

Who else would provide Jon Stewart with such rich, delicious fodder for parody on a Daily Show segment? Beck’s emergency appendectomy this week gave Stewart an opening to tear out his appendix using a scalpel of satire.

Yet another reason why Stewart provides the most-incisive coverage of news on television.

Another Great Swindle: Doctors, Hospitals, Pharma As Much To Blame As Insurers

2009-11-06T11:52:00.011-05:00

Six months ago, in a long-forgotten article, I quoted a Cleveland physician complaining that health care reform will cut his income so sharply he will be forced to curb his lush standard of living.

… a physician acquaintance in Ohio who is a highly regarded specialist with a seven figure income … complains to me that any of the current health reform proposals will cut his income in half, at least, as if his life would disintegrate if he had to live on only five or six hundred thousand dollars a year. Better 47-million people not have access to his training, skills and expertise than he drops one of his two country club memberships because of personal financial hardship.

While the health insurance industry’s immoral, amoral and, sometimes, illegal treatment of policyholders is an appropriate prime culprit and target in the current push for reform, the fact is that physicians, hospitals and drug companies are getting an undeserved pass by much of the media. They are as much to blame for health care problems and out-of-control costs as Aetna, the Blues, Wellpoint and other insurance companies.

Trouble is, not only is the media letting them off the hook, so is Congress.

One of the original key goals of health care reform was to lower the obscene cost of getting sick and recovering in America, whose citizens pay far more for everything from a simple visit to the doctor to complicated tests to prescription drugs than anyone else in the civilised world. Yet neither the likely House version nor the current Senate version of reform give cost cutting more than a flicker of attention.

So Kaiser Permanente chief executive George Halvorson showed Ezra Klein of the Washington Post a series of revealing and extremely disturbing charts, comparing the cost of similar medical services in the US and five other Western countries plus US Medicare.

Kaiser is the largest managed care organisation in the US, founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry Kaiser, and consists of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and regional Permanente Medical Groups.

Since it insures some nine million people as well as operating not-for-profit hospitals and clinics, Halvorson has horses running in the race – but on both ends of the betting line. So while he is in a unique position to see the issue two ways.

Office Visits

According to Halvorson’s charts, it costs the typical patient in the US anywhere from $59 to $151 to see a doctor. In countries with a national health plan, the price is a fraction of what it is here. In Spain, the cost to see a doctor is $15; Germany $22; France $31; the Netherlands $32; and Canada $30. Under Medicare, it is $72. In Canada, for example, the fee for a doctor’s visit is negotiated between the government and the College of Physicians and Surgeons in each province; in the US rates are whatever the doctor can get away with charging, except when treating Medicare and Medicaid paitents.

Yet Congress is backing off trying to control even a portion of the cost of an office visit by refusing to roll back scheduled increases in what Medicare pays physicians to see each patient. No wonder the AMA gave its full-throated endorsement of the House bill – and reform generally – yesterday: Its member’s income won’t be affected one bit so my physician friend in Ohio will be able to keep both of his country club memberships.

Complex Exams

Nothing in the human body is more complex than the brain yet there are enormous spreads in the cost of a CT head scan between the US and other countries. In America, with “the greatest health care system in the world,” a CT head scan cost ranges from $950 to $1,800. In Canada, where I’ve had such a scan, the cost to the system ranges between $41 – really! – and $530. Germany is the most expensive of the six countries compared yet its cost per scan is one-third of the low end of the US range.

Prescription Meds

It’s just as bad in the US after the tests are done and a patient walks from the doctor’s office to a pharmacy across the street to fill a prescription.

Lipitor is a widely-advertised and often-prescribed medication for lowering cholesterol. In America, the pharmacist will collect anywhere from $125 to $334 before handing over the prescription bottle because drug prices are not regulated.

In one of Congresses most disgraceful sell-outs, in 2005 it prohibited Medicare from negotiating with Pfizer for what will be charged patients for the drug. Yet in each of the five other nations surveyed – where government negotiates the price of all prescription medications – patients pay a tiny fraction of what Americans must shell out.

What happens when the price of Lipitor is negotiated? It plunges. I mean plunges: In each of the other five countries, the cost per prescription is anywhere from one-quarter to one-half of what Americans shell out for the exact same medicine treating the identical ailment.

Yet Big Pharma got Congress and the Obama administration to agree to not set up a system to negotiate drug prices. So, every time any American needs to have a prescription filled, the pharmaceutical industry and member of Congress will make them wish they lived somewhere else. No wonder so many people in the US buy medicine in Canada.

As WaPo’s Klein notes, “There is a thudding consistency to the (charts): A series of crude bars, with the block representing the prices paid by American health-insurance plans looming over the others like a New York skyscraper that got lost in downtown Des Moines.”

There is a reason why American health care costs so much more than in any other country: We pay so much more for each unit of care. As Halvorson explained to Klein, and both university studies and consulting companies confirm repeatedly, if you leave everything the same – number of procedures, days spent in hospital, number of operations done – but plug in prices Canadians pay, America’s health care spending falls by 50%.

This is more than enough to cover every uninsured person in the US.

UPDATED: Humana Trolls College Campuses For Whores

2009-11-02T12:39:00.007-05:00

Here’s good news for college and university students desperate for a part-time job that won’t even require leaving a dorm room.

Humana, Inc., the fine and good corporate citizen that spends millions of its customer’s premium dollars to fight health care reform and a public option rather than using them to pay claims, now wants to use even more premium bucks to pay students willing to sneak on-line at places such as Facebook and Twitter to tout the horrors of any change to America’s superb health care delivery and financing system.

In other words, Humana is trolling college campuses looking for whores willing to accept money to be on-line promoters of an anti-reform policy that’s against the student’s own, best interests – or will be, once they leave school and are on their own. Given the state of the economy, no doubt Humana will be overwhelmed with applications.

On Monday morning, blogger Molly Horan reports that Humana is actively recruiting students to develop and implement viral media strategies designed to undermine support for health care reform among their unsuspecting peers, making the whole thing appear as if it’s coming from just another tea party protester who can use a computer.

Fortunately, the Federal Trade Commission is one step ahead of Humana.

New Disclosure Rules

Beginning Dec. 1, bloggers and TV shows alike will have to disclose if they’re getting cash for mentioning or touting a product or idea. Clearly, Humana’s paid corps of anti-reform student zealots will have to mention they’re getting more than a penny for their thoughts.

As N.E. Marsden wrote Friday in an Op-Ed piece at the Washington Post, “bloggers and, more important, stealth corporate marketers (must) post ‘clear and conspicuous’ disclosures when they receive payment for endorsing online. … The principle is sound: People have a right to know when someone is trying to sell them something.”

While I’m all in favour of the free marketplace of ideas, when the ideas are being slipped to a writer in exchange for cash, I’d like to know who’s footing the bill. This is on a par with George Bush secretly paying Iraqi journalists in 2005 to write glowing articles on the glorious wonders of the American invasion and occupation.

Humana’s strategy gives a new and broader meaning to its slogan, “Guidance when you need it most.” Under the circumstances, it might be more appropriate as “Guidance we pay for when we need you to shill for us.”

Is Everyone A Fraud?

Look, I know times are tough. Jobs scarce. The future scary. Real health care and insurance reform a toss-up. So, having been one once, I can’t really blame journalism students for trying to grab a bit of spare change where they can – although, hopefully, some will have the integrity to see the offer for what it is, and reject the idea of applying out-of-hand.

Still, I can’t help but shudder when I read the job posting:

Humana – Guidance when you need it most
Role: Political Communications Specialist (part-time, limited-term)
Location: Chicago, Ill. or work-at-home

Are you interested in politics and political communication? Have a way with words? Know your way around Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere? Put your skills to work where politics, communication and public relations intersect. You will:
• Help manage and track a variety of online (“Web 2.0”) channels
• Build a strategic new media and social media presence
• Contribute content for both traditional and new media
• Get a “foot in the door” and gain valuable experience in one of today’s most challenging and fast-paced public policy arenas – health care

This is PR flackery, pure and simple, and of the worst kind. Humana is trying to lure virgin minds onto the rocks of whoredom by singing a siren song promising money and “valuable experience” in exchange for selling out America.

It’s ethical fraud; not illegal but definitely immoral.

Of course, it turns out there’s as much ethical fraud being committed by mainstream and highly respected journalists, as well.

A week ago, the lead story on CBS’ 60 Minutes covered the supposed $60-billion fraud in Medicare payments. I sat watching it dumbfounded, wondering if this might pound a huge nail in the coffin of the public option. Pierre Tristam had the same reaction. But then, he decided to confirm the 60 Minutes reporting.

Tristam is an editorial writer for the Daytona News Journal. He started by calling the show’s producers who referred him to the person at the Justice Dept. who worked with 60 Minutes which, he eventually admitted, used a high figure in the “range” of “possible” and “believed to be” Medicare fraud.

So Tristam kept digging, finally publishing a remarkable Sunday piece titled “Loose With Numbers: Medicare Fraud Report A Fiction.”

Steve Kroft and his producers never bothered to trace their facts to the source for viewers, relying instead on the slob-journalist's cheapest cop-out: Attribution by estimates. Nor did they make the equally important point: Insurance fraud isn't unique to Medicare or government-run programs. If anything, it affects the private sector more. Shame on "60 Minutes" and the Justice Department for throwing around wild numbers. Those are the numbers – the fictions – shaping public opinion across the country and public policy in Washington.

Medicare fraud is a serious problem. But singling it out and exaggerating it beyond credibility won't fix it, although it may help doom any government expansion of health care. In that regard, the 60 Minutes segment did its death-panel best.

I feel as if the whole world has turned into the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, sneaking around behind everyone’s back, putting in the fix, winking and nodding at the rubes, and damning the consequences – as well as the rest of us.

UPDATE – Nov 3, 2009

It’s not just Humana that’s looking for students to be on-line trollers. Israel is also looking for people, according to the website Desert Peace:

“The Foreign Ministry unveiled a new plan this week: Paying talkbackers to post pro-Israel responses on websites worldwide. A total of NIS 600,000 (roughly $150,000) will be earmarked to the establishment of an "Internet warfare" squad.

“The Foreign Ministry intends to hire young people who speak at least one language and who study communication, political science, or law – or alternately, Israelis with military experience gained at units dealing with information analysis.”

And so it goes.

A special h/t to Breandan Healy

Plamegate Rides Again: Early Peek At New Film

2009-10-28T16:02:00.003-04:00

Thanks to the movie website Corona Coming Attractions, there’s an advance review of the new film Fair Game, based on the book by Valerie Plame, the CIA case officer who was “outed” by the Bush Administration when her husband called the president a liar in The New York Times in July, 2003, for claiming Iraq was acquiring nuclear weapons material.

Wilson’s Op-Ed piece led to a firestorm in Washington, an admission by the White House that it had exaggerated the claim in Bush’s State of the Union address during the run-up to the war, and a series of investigations that resulted in convicted felon Scooter Libby not going to jail thanks to his pal Dick Cheney.

The rest is history – and now a movie.

A test screening for Fair Game, which stars Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, was held a few days ago and someone at Coming Attraction caught an early cut of the film:

"Fair Game is really a tremendous, thought provoking film. It's based on the same titled memoir by former CIA Agent Valerie Plame, who of course worked for the agency as an undercover spy until her husband wrote an op-ed piece declaring that the Bush White House lied about Sadaam Hussein's efforts to buy yellow-cake uranium from Niger. Naomi Watts plays Plame (and as shown at the ending, really looks a lot like her), and plays her wonderfully. The story is set up through a sequence at the beginning showing her in action in the field, and in the CIA headquarters being completely dedicated to her job. She loves what she does for her country even at the price the travel and the secrecy puts on her family life.

"She's married to former Ambassador Joe Wilson, played by Sean Penn in what very easily could (and should) be his next Oscar nomination. Wilson is a man in turmoil almost from his opening scene, dining with friends who think they know everything about the world. They don't, Wilson doesn't, but he certainly knows more about the Iraq situation than they do and is glad to tell anybody about it who will listen. His expertise gets him looked at (through no suggestion of his wife) and requested of by the CIA to take a trip to Niger to investigate reports that Hussein was looking to buy uranium from that country, which Wilson was a leading expert on. He agreed, made the trip, found that there was no possible way that a purchase of yellowcake was made, and reported that back to the government. The administration, as we now know, chose to ignore this report, and used the incorrect intelligence as a key basis in its case for war.

"This destroys Wilson, who starts to speak up in the press, and the leak of his wife's identity was made. We're led to believe that the order of the leak was made by Karl Rove to Scooter Libby (played by a hilariously serious David Andrews), and the rest is history. Plame's career is destroyed, her marriage (and life) nearly go along with it, and a major investigation into corruption in the Bush White House is launched, ultimately leading to the fall of Libby.

"The film clocked in at roughly 1:50, and paced tremendously well. There was a side-plot they spent a bit too much time on involving an Iraqi family and Plame's valiant efforts to save them from the invasion, but that was really the only downfall of the film. Watts is excellent, at least as good as she was in Eastern Promises, and Penn is as good here as I've seen him. It's directed by Doug Liman who did an excellent job of it, and I believe he also served as DP, so kudos to him as I often forgot the camera was even rolling. Truly a wonderful human drama with political suspense that should interest anybody no matter how they vote. 9/10 (stars)."

Fair Game does not have a scheduled release date and often films are edited heavily based on audience comments at advanced screenings.

Confessions Of A Techno-Luddite

2009-10-26T14:58:00.012-04:00

As the weekend arrived, The New York Times carried a semi-sneering piece on the tiny and ever-dwindling number of people who still refuse to have a cell phone. It cites a study done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that finds more than 85% of all Americans now have a mobile; the Federal Communications Commission says cell phones caught on faster than either cable TV or home computers.

While Pew concludes that cell “refuseniks” generally are less educated and poorer than people who have them, it concedes grudgingly there is “a subset of adults who resist cell phones simply because they do not want them. They resent the way (cells) disrupt face-to-face conversation. They savour their moments alone and prize the fact that no one knows how to reach them.”

Exactly. Roughly 5% of Americans without cells simply don’t want one. People like me, and Gregory Han.

“It’s a luxury not to be reached when I’m out and about,” Han, a 34-year-old Los Angeles-based writer-editor, tells the Times.

D'accord!

The paper has a Toronto bureau but no one called me for the story. If they had, I would have been delighted to explain why I am a complete techno-Luddite: Not only do I not have a cell phone, I don’t own a BlackBerry, pager, PDA, laptop, digital camera, Webcam, iPod, iBook or, for that matter, iAnything, cordless phone, home network, WiFi, Wii, Skype, Kindle and whatever else took the world by storm yesterday. I don’t download music, movies or porn from the intertubes. I don’t bank, direct deposit or buy on-line, and avoid ATMs. My e-mail includes an instant message feature but I never activated it. For that matter, I’ve never sent a text message, visited a chat room, had a Facebook page or Twittered; no one cares that I’m leaving for lunch now or that I’ve just returned.

Who could possibly care whether anyone is leaving for lunch? And I don’t want people to interrupt me when I’m eating.

“Cell refuseniks are making a statement that they control their availability,” John Horrigan, research director at the National Broadband Task Force, speculates.

Precisely.

Little Protest

Maybe Horrigan is right, but I’m also making a different statement, a tiny protest that’s probably as effective as telling Lou Dobbs that immigrants are good for America: Just because technology lets you do something doesn’t mean you should or that it’s even a good idea.

Apparently, people like me are such an oddity that the on-line edition of the otherwise august and totally sober Columbia Journalism Review made note of the Times’ article.

It’s true, we are an oddity. When people ask for my cell number, they’re aghast when I explain I don’t have one, offering my old fashioned land line instead.

“No cell phone?” comes the incredulous reply. “Seriously? How do you survive without one?”

I survive just fine but Sheila Shirazi admits discarding friends who go without, telling the Times, “I don’t have the time and energy … to coordinate with somebody who isn’t mobile.”

Ms. Shirazi isn’t unique.

A few years back, a woman I was mildly interested in seeing dumped me during our first dinner together because I don’t have a cell. Over the decades, I’ve been rejected by women for countless reasons, good and goofy, but never because I refused to tote around a small piece of gadgetry. On Seinfeld, Jerry once stopped dating a woman because she ate peas one at a time; my fledgling romance was nipped-in-the-bud and died for about as rational a reason.

Get Serious

OK, I admit snatching at technology when it’s useful. I never grasped Dewey’s decimal system for library research at school but I mastered the art of crafty searching and rummage around on Google numerous times every day.

And I do see value in having a stand-by cell phone for some people: Those travelling lonely roads by themselves. Kids, so they can reach a parent quickly. The sick and disabled to get help quickly. Critical care doctors.

But come on.

I’ve followed tweeners through malls who were on cell phones the entire time. What could they be talking about? The Gap has a sale? Joey likes Deirdre? The math test was really hard?

I’ve eaten in spiffy boittes where everyone at a table was “celling” so why did they bother eating together? Hong Kong has it right: Most restaurants demand mobiles be turned off and checked with the maitre d’ before being seated.

I’ve ridden trains where cell phone users were forced to shout over the track noise, making everyone else in the car unwilling participants in the call.

I’ve sat in offices where the person across the desk wore an earpiece cell phone so I never knew if they were speaking to me or to the phone.

It’s a losing battle, I realise, my fight against cells and other techno-stuff. The 5% of us who don’t always want to be instantly connected to everyone else are like Dutch boys with our fingers in the dikes. We may stop one small leak but waves of water are washing over the top, drowning us in a sea of gizmos and gadgets.

Yet Again, The Army Fails Its Troops

2009-10-19T12:03:00.002-04:00

Like politicians, institutional bureaucracies know the best way to bury bad news is to release it late on a Friday afternoon.

This is exactly what the Pentagon did in the waning twilight last Friday when investigators publicly unleashed a searing, 325-page report on the string of shootings last May in a combat stress and mental health clinic in Baghdad’s Camp Liberty that left four soldiers and one sailor dead. After repeatedly reaching out for help, Army Sgt. John Russell stole a gun from an MP, walked into the clinic where he had been treated briefly an hour earlier and opened fire.

The PR ploy worked. The report was ignored over the weekend by virtually every media outlet except Stars and Stripes. No doubt the Pentagon was relieved because the report tears a strip off the Army for not giving commanders in Iraq – and, by extension, Afghanistan – the necessary tools, training and guidance to handle at-risk soldiers.

So, once again, the Army fails to support its own troops and, worse, it’s failing and flailing over the same basic issue in 2006 that dragged the Army kicking and screaming into 21st century after it was criticized for punishing soldiers who sought mental health help during or after war zone duty tours. Supposedly, the Army changed its policy and began actively encouraging all personnel to get treatment without fear of retribution.

OK, so soldiers and officers can go for help without risking their career. The problem is the top brass didn’t bother to tell field commanders – from sergeants to senior officers – how to spot a troubled trooper or what to do with them when they suspected a problem.

A staff member on the House Armed Services Committee, who is not authorised to speak with reporters on-the-record, told me on Monday, “We have no idea how to budge the Army into doing something positive that actually works” when it comes to dealing with either enlisted personnel or officers who are suspected of having mental health issues.

“(Senior officers) come before the committee and say all the right things,” this staffer continued, “but it looks like they forget all about it the moment they walk out of the hearing room.”

Institutional Problem

The report damns what is, as my dad’s father would say in a thick dialect as he kvetched about lukewarm soup at Plotnik’s deli in Milwaukee, “Oy, a farshlepteh krenk” – a chronic complaint.

In doing its investigation, the Army interviewed Russell’s fellow grunts, commanders and doctors to trace the events leading to the shooting. The report chronicles widespread failures – one after another, in Russell’s case – to implement the Multi-National Force-Iraq mental health policy. No one from non-commissioned officers to field commanders are provided direction to carry out preventive mental health measures, according to the report.

In a statement that is both disturbing and sad, Russell’s sergeant said, “What I don’t understand is from the time a soldier has been identified that they may have behavioral health problems, what do you really do with them?”

Yikes.

The Army report insists that majors through lieutenant colonels “require precise instruction in effective suicide and behavioral problem remediation measures to effectively support our behavioral health professionals,” the report states.

At the unit level, “there is no real conception of when to command refer a soldier for assistance.”

Leaders with Russell’s unit “admitted they lack the fundamental skills to deal with behavioral health issues,” and had no formal policies or procedures to guide them, according to the report.

It gets worse. The investigation says there is no clearly defined procedure to track and monitor the issues once they are identified. Russell’s commanders were not aware he had threatened suicide or that his immediate supervisors had removed the bolt from his gun.

Who’s In Charge?

In Paddy Chayefsky’s great 1971 film The Hospital, George C. Scott – a worn down and worn out physician – explains the inexplicable death of a patient by saying, “We just neglected him to death.”

In a sense, the Army neglected Sgt. Russell to death – and the deaths of five other people.

The report details how the Army tells units dealing with a potentially suicidal soldier to use the “buddy system” and “unit watch” without providing “even notional reference to describe” as to what the terms actually mean in real life. They have been common in the Army for years, but there is no Army-wide standard or instruction for how to carry them out. Russell was supposedly on “unit watch” in the days leading up to the shootings yet his unit had no guidelines on how to actually do this.

“We’re looking into whether there will be hearings on this,” the Congressional aide told me. “The problem is, it seems like no one is in charge when it comes to mental illness in the Army.”
- - - - -
I wrote this piece originally for the LA Progressive, where it appeared earlier today.

Everyone But Fox And The Taliban Applaud Obama’s Peace Prize

2009-10-09T14:03:00.003-04:00

No sooner was it announced that Barack Obama won the 2009 Peace Prize, than I heard from Ann Aurelius. An old friend from high school back in Minneapolis, Ann is as Norwegian as Lutefisk and pancake suppers in a Lutheran church basement during a cold Minnesota winter. When Garrison Keillor talks about the people of Lake Woebegon, he’s talking about Ann.

“Cheeky Norwegians! Good for them!” Ann enthused in an early morning e-mail shortly after getting word. “The world needs shaking up! I think they realize that his fight for justice (including) universal health care is as much about world peace as ending wars and conflicts. Even beer in the Rose Garden to smooth out racial issues. Sometimes, it's not about the big things but an entire attitude.”

The head of the Nobel Committee didn’t say it any better.

Except for the lowlanders at Fox and the Taliban’s official spokesman, most of the world is applauding the move in Oslo. Beyond the usual tributes from Obama’s fellow heads-of-state, a think piece in The Independent explains why he may have won.

The Independent observes “… the Nobel prize has a long history of being awarded more for the committee's aspirations than for others' accomplishments … The prize is awarded to encourage those who receive it to see the effort through, sometimes at critical moments … The Nobel committee has the audacity to hope that he'll produce a record worthy of its prize.”

Agence France Presse is considerably less inhibited, saying the president “sensationally won the Nobel Peace Prize …” And across the Channel, Peter Beaumont of The Guardian writes what is on the minds of many today, noting that perhaps the prize was “awarded to Barack Obama for what he is not: For not being George W. Bush.”

And over at the Grande Dame of broadcasting, Paul Reynolds of BBCNews.com writes, “The citation indicates that it is President Obama's world view that attracted the Nobel committee – that diplomacy should be founded ‘on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.’”

The Livid Right

I wonder if Fox News, The National Review and RedState.com are happy that they have something in common with the Taliban: Each blasted Obama receiving the Nobel Prize as soon as the award was announced.

In fact, because of the time difference between Afghanistan, Norway and New York, the Taliban may have scooped Fox this morning.

Under the headline “Becoming Jimmy Carter Faster Than Jimmy Carter,” RedState’s Erick Erickson whined “I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota … but that is the only thing I can think of for this news …” Apparently not knowing anything about the peace prize, including how or why it is awarded, Erickson is saying the only reason a black president could win the accolade is because he is black. And the right wonders why progressives brand so many of them racist when they write or talk about the president.

Not surprisingly, Fox has the wildest ideas.

Crazy Foxes

Tommy De Seno at FoxNews.com is no more informed of the process than Erickson. He carefully catalogues Obama’s first 12 days in office – that’s when the nomination period ended – and other than “skipping church” three times and “release federal funding to pay for abortions in foreign countries,” Obama did nothing. De Seno brushes off ending torture as “re-affirmed Army Field Manual techniques for interrogations” and “expressed desire to close Gitmo” as mere trifled.

Hey, Tommy: The nominations may have closed Feb. 1 but that doesn’t mean the Nobel Committee tosses all of the names in a hat and draws out one in October. There’s actually a lengty consideration and deliberation process involved and, I’ve read, often heated arguments between committee members over different nominees.

Not so this time: The Nobel Committee announcement said the choice of Obama was unanimous.

That didn’t stop Foxtails commenting on De Seno’s posting from acting like idiots. Here are a handful of the hundreds of comments written, without fixing spelling, punctuation or grammar:

Martmann, North Carolina: i have a funny inkling that acorn is behind this travesty by the nobel prize committie acorn acorn acorn thats what they do for there former lawyer and teacher at there institution.

ataube439 Massachusetts: I didn't think Barack Obama hated the Jews enough to win the prize. Go Figure.

Kathykwny New York: Obama's arrogance will know no bounds now that he has this bogus honor. (He) would rather see us marginalized and subservient to dictators around the world. Congratulations, Mr. President! You have finally done it!

Wooptyone Wisconsin: “Way to go Ole and Lena...

Truthproject Colorado: Kudos to Fox Network for Not pandering to this administration. The Nobel committee has proven once again that they can not discern egos from ethics. I am glad that Mr. Obama is not my savior.

thom1 Pennsylvania: Is he the first person from Kenya to win this? just wondering?

I’m not sure how Fox friend “martmann” manages to wrangle his mind in enough different directions until it links ACORN and the Nobel Peace Prize but he’s convinced of it enough to write a comment for the entire world to see. Meanwhile, “Wooptyone” is busy making derogatory comments about Norwegians and “atyube439” is revelling in his anti-Semitism.

I don’t know whether this is sad or scary.

I do know that when a sitting American president is named a Nobel laureate – including Obama, only Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson have been so honoured while still in office – it is a cause for rejoicing not just in the US but in the world. It also puts tremendous pressure on Pres. Obama to live up to the high standards and expectations the world has set for him.

Finding a near-term way out of Afghanistan would be a good place to start.

Was Jesus A Socialist?

2009-10-05T13:57:00.004-04:00

According to Variety’s weekend tally of boffo box office receipts, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story took in nearly $4.9-million in its first weekend of national release. While far more people went nut up instead of shut up and saw Zombieland than screened what Time magazine’s Mary Corbliss called Moore’s “magnum opus,” enough tickets were sold to land his frequently biting, often hilarious and totally frightening indictment of free markets run amok at number six on Variety’s list of the weekend’s most popular films – rare for a documentary but common for Moore and beating Fame, The Informant and Love Happens while tying with Whip It in the process.

I went to see Capitalism at a four o’clock show Sunday afternoon, the second time I’d seen the picture. Living in Toronto, I was startled to see the theatre more than half-filled; although I recognised a few familiar faces from Democrats Abroad, the audience was Canadian and I didn’t realise my adopted country would be so interested in Moore’s ripping apart America’s soft but well-paid and stock option-laden underbelly. Apparently so: Last night, CBC NewsWorld aired Sicko uncut, Moore’s searing denunciation of the US health care system, in prime time.

Intriguing Question

I saw Capitalism again because I suspected I missed a lot when I screened it before the Toronto Film Festival. Then, it had me roiling with anger-bordering-rage like many people who watched it on opening night. In a mass e-mail Saturday morning, Moore wrote to friends:

“One manager … said, ‘It's a good thing we carry (candy) at the concession stand instead of pitchforks and torches! These crowds were ready to march over to the local Citibank and do something!’ Another manager said a crowd in the lobby formed around the little Chase ATM machine next to his popcorn stand and started to ‘yell at it.’"

Sunday afternoon I discovered I was right; I missed a lot and watched it more dispassionately.

What didn’t register at the first screening was the profound theological message Moore, a devout Catholic, wires into the film. He doesn’t do it in a way that even remotely resembles what the evangelical right does on a daily basis, treating God and Jesus like the personal Mr. Fix-It of believing evangelicals and, by extension, the world if it only accepted The Word The Way True Believers Know It.

Indeed, Moore makes it plain that he has no use for Christians – including Catholics – who use “Jesus” as a banner to argue against everything from eliminating poverty, taxes, science, abortion, immigration, health care reform and illegal wars. But he poses an intriguingly serious question that reviewers – including me – almost entirely overlook:

Was Jesus a Socialist?

For people of other faiths, it might be more appropriate to ask whether Moses had a progressive agenda? Could it be that Mohammad was a lefty? For non-believers or those who question the whole idea of religion, the question might be put more aptly as, “Can anyone with an ounce of humanity in them think it’s alright to pass laws and enact regulations that allows stealing from the poor to give to the rich?”

Heavy Hitters

Moore trots out some heavy hitting priests – including two Bishops – to answer in the affirmative: Yes, Jesus was a socialist. Although I’m not religious and wasn’t raised in a religious home, let alone a Christian one, I took enough comparative religion classes to remember that stuff about giving to the poor, the fishes and loaves, rich men squeezing through needle eyes and all the rest.

Judaism is on the same page, even if pre-dates Christianity by a few millennia and there aren’t any Holy Ghosts rumbling around in its dark hallways.

The Old Testament legislates laws which are a sort of tax for the benefit of the poor. The institution of the sabbatical year was so "that the poor of the people may eat" as well as to cancel debts about which the warning was given, "If there be among you a needy man, one of your brethren, within thy gates, in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thy heart nor shut thy hand from thy needy brother …”

Even the Quran insists that Moslems have a special duty to take care of the needy, the less fortunate and the downtrodden.

Come to think of it, it’s really only right wingers in the US – which often means Christian fundy’s – who’ve perverted religion to argue for small, ineffective government, tax breaks only for the wealthiest, health care only for the healthiest, food only for the fullest, good schools only for the smartest, and clean air or water only for those who pollute.

I’m not here to start an argument over how to interpret religions but rather to point out that Moore’s real issue isn’t that capitalism needs destroying but that it has lost way. It has wandered too far from its basic, religious roots in helping ensure not just economic and social equality but a levelling of the great breach that’s opened between the rich and everyone else.

Since many on the right keep insisting that “America is a Christian nation,” maybe it is time for them – for the nation – to start acting more like Christians. If Jesus existed – even as a historical figure and forgetting about the fairy tale of him springing from the womb of a virgin as god’s son – I’m convinced, like Michael Moore, that Jesus was a socialist.

Only Video Of Anne Frank Found, Posted On-Line

2009-10-03T15:41:00.004-04:00

In a way, this is very unnerving.

The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam just started a YouTube channel and one of its first uploads is a 1941 home movie of a wedding party leaving a building. As the camera pans around, Anne is seen looking out an upper floor window.

Not The Belly Of The Beast

2009-10-03T12:56:00.005-04:00

This week, I re-enter the Canadian national health system for tests to see if my cancer returned since the last round of treatment ended six months ago.

For those of you in the States who might be starting to believe the Republican noise machine, be assured that I’ve not been on a waiting list or pleading my case before a death panel and, regardless of the outcome, I won’t be handed a staggering bill on my way out the door. The only inconvenience – besides waiting anxiously to learn the results – is that I couldn’t get an appointment when I wanted. I’d asked for Monday morning but am stuck with midday on Thursday.

Hardly a journey into the belly of the beast – apologies to Jack Abbott and Norman Mailer – as right wing lunatics keep insisting is the only possible outcome of a government-sponsored public option.

Yes, it’s personally unnerving and thoroughly unpleasant but at least I don’t have to worry about an insurance company pulling the rug out from under me because I’m denting its bottom line, forcing me into bankruptcy. Nor do I have to fret that whoever represents my riding in Parliament is a complete idiot like the grotesquely insensitive Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA). At a town hall meeting recently, he told a constituent suffering from years of clinical depression but can’t afford health insurance to pay for a psychiatrist to “go to an emergency room.”

Actually, the man did go to an emergency room – after he tried committing suicide.

As Georgia Liberal so aptly noted on Thursday, “Treating major depression is not a one-shot deal. That is like saying cancer patients should get treatment one night in the ER and it is all better.”

If only.

Oh, and in case Broun The Knuckledragger didn’t notice, people receive a bill for going to the ER. It ain’t free in the US which is why hospitals hire collection agencies, and sue patients who can’t pay, forcing sick people who are hapless victims of an awful system into bankruptcy.

Thanks Max Baucus and the ObstructaDems and the GOP and Fox and the medico-insurance complex. You’ve really done a number on America. The question for us is: Why are we sitting at home reading this instead of storming Washington demanding the change we voted for?

Glenn Beck Can’t Take Glenn Beck’s Heat

2009-09-30T12:55:00.004-04:00

The website is clearly labelled satire and parody; in fact, it says so in very strong language on the home page for anyone who can’t figure it out for themselves. But Glenn Beck, never known for possessing a sense of wit – although some may call him a half-wit – is livid that Isaac Eiland-Hall launched glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.

Essentially, Eiland-Hall turns Beck on himself, using his own tactics in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of a time, one hundred lifetimes ago, when Edward R. Murrow demolished another rabid demagogue, Sen. Joe McCarthy by using McCarthy’s own words.

As if channelling Beck’s writers, Eiland-Hall’s site proclaims it, “exists to try and help examine the vicious rumour that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. We don't claim to know the truth – only that the rumour floating around saying that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 should be discussed. So we're going to do our part to try and help get to the bottom of this.

“Why won't Glenn Beck deny these allegations?” the website asks. “We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 – in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?”

Beck uses this identical approach to everything from claiming Pres. Obama is a white-hating racist to accusing him of indoctrinating young children by urging them to stay in school to insisting health reform is really a hidden plot involving death panels for granny.

Warning: Satire Ahead

Unlike, say The Onion, which everyone knows is satire as it tears apart every mainstream American convention, apparently many people going to Eiland-Hall’s site are missing a few pencils in their box and don’t get the joke. To assure the world – and protect himself legally – the site’s creator has a prominent disclaimer along the bottom of the home page.

Notice: This site is parody/satire. We assume Glenn Beck did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990, although we haven't yet seen proof that he didn't. But we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation.

Read the last sentence again. That's the point. Read it a third time and ignore the name of the site itself, because anyone who believes that we're trying to actually get people to believe Glenn Beck raped and/or murdered is *whoosh* missing the entire point. So don't be dumb like a lot of people are. I greatly expanded this text because so many people *read* it, and *still* didn't understand.

Not even an obviously fake video of a supposedly distraught woman convinces some that the whole thing is a grand send-up of someone – Beck – who increasingly parodies himself on Fox every day.

Et Tu, Glenn

Gee, here’s a surprise: Beck doesn’t like the site. Uninformed bullies seldom enjoy seeing themselves parodied.

But knowing full well that a federal lawsuit to block the site would fail miserably because courts have held for more than 50 years political satire and humor are protected by the 1st Amendment, Beck’s lawyers are trying an end-run. They’ve filed an administrative complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization. WIPO handles disputes over domain names. The complaint claims that the site was improperly using a trademark and the domain name was registered and being used in bad faith.

Yesterday, Eiland-Hall's lawyer, Marc Randazza, filed a response. In it, he says the site should be his because it's a valid critique of Beck's politics.

"The Web site is a legitimate criticism site, consists of political satire, and thus the Respondent has legitimate rights in the domain name," the brief says. "Mr. Beck's attempt to censor this criticism is improper and should be rejected."

To help the tribunal, Eiland-Hall’s lawyers helpfully offer a history of esoteric inside jokes that became Internet phenomena from "Mr. Spock Ate My Balls" to Richard Gere's unflattering "Gerbil story." But the case also makes a political point, noting an interview Beck conducted with Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim, in which Beck said on air, "I like Muslims, I've been to mosques … And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.”

Mr. Beck, what I feel like writing is, sir, prove to me that you are not completely unhinged. And, anyway, why won’t you deny rumors that you raped and murdered a young girl in 1991 so this whole thing can be put to rest?

Medical Journal "Health Affairs" Bends And Coughs Over For Aetna

2009-09-28T11:02:00.007-04:00

For several years, professional medical journals have been drawing heavy artillery fire for not disclosing any conflicts of interest its authors have with the subject they’re covering, hyping faulty studies and publishing too many glowing articles about new pharmaceuticals that have questionable value.

This is why the latest issue of Health Affairs leaves me deeply troubled because the peer-reviewed health policy journal turned over the cover of a recent issue to Aetna, the nation’s third largest insurance company. That’s right, Aetna. The same behemoth with a vicious Rotweiller in the health care reform dog fight opposing any reform that doesn’t profit Aetna.

Health Affairs made a deal with Aetna to sponsor the current issue of the journal. The problem is that the theme of the edition is “Bending the Cost Curve.” This is wonk speak for “controlling or containing medical costs in ways that send shivers up the spine of Aetna.”

Unfortunately, “Bending The Cost Curve” is clever jargon that often filters into the MSM and down to the general public, where no one knows what the hell it means. William Safire, whose love of the English language and its use, and who died this weekend, must be spinning in his still-fresh grave.

In exchange for its cash, Aetna got to design a cover that was pasted on the publication, hiding the journal’s real cover. The faux cover is the one a reader sees unless they look under the hood, and this one is a doosey. It features a “Dear Colleague” letter from Aetna CEO Ronald A. Williams. In the letter, Williams enthuses about his company’s concern for patients and improving the quality of care.

We believe that the right solution will be based on what is already working in the private sector, and should include an individual coverage requirement and guaranteed issue with no pre-existing conditions. Addressing health care costs is equally important, and we must simplify the system so that doctors and caregivers can spend more time with patients.

It sounds wonderful except for four things.

First, any physician or health care worker who thinks Aetna is their “colleague” is seriously delusional.

Second, Aetna’s “right solution” isn’t working in the private sector for anyone except Aetna, and its insurance brothers-in-Satan. This is why nearly 50-million Americans aren’t insured at all with another 12-million underinsured, and why a new Harvard study documents that 45,000 people die every year because folks like Williams either cancel their coverage, deny treatment or refuse to issue a policy to them.

Third, if simplifying the system is so important, why hasn’t Aetna done it already so “doctors and caregivers can spend more time with patients”? It’s insurers that can’t figure out a way to standardize forms or how to process a claim in less than 180 days so a doctor gets paid promptly for a patient’s visit.

Fourth – and this is what really sent me over the top because Williams' letter never mentions it – Aetna and the industry will go along with “guaranteed issue with no pre-existing conditions” only if Congress mandates that everyone has to buy a policy from the insurers rather than through a public option because such a requirement means billions in additional revenue and profits for Aetna and its friends.

Aetna had no comment on the sponsorship and it’s hard to figure out whether Aetna’s funding affects editorial decisions.

In one section called “saving money,” there’s a think piece called “Opportunities To Improve The Quality Of Care For Advanced Illness.” It describes a care management program Aetna is piloting that “gives people culturally sensitive supporting information, to make informed choices and obtain palliative services in a timely manner.”

Whoa! Where are the tea baggers and cries of “Death Panels!”?

I guess someone on the right decided that it’s okay for insurance companies to help people make informed choices about end-of-life care, but not for the government to pay the cost of a doctor’s visit so a Medicare patient can have the identical discussion.

Chalk it up as example No. 3188 of Republican hypocrisy.

This whole thing makes me want to wretch. Aetna trumpeting concern for cost-control and the plight of the uninsured on the cover of a professional journal is the kind of chicanery that became so familiar this summer. The insurance industry keeps portraying itself as a good guy in this fight, all the while working behind the scenes to stop what is good for Americans.

Being on the cover of Health Affairs is a PR flack’s wet dream about burnishing the image of a badly tarnished reality.

– Hat tip to Trudy Lieberman

Health Reform Inaction More Likely To Kill You Than A Drunk Driver

2009-09-27T13:18:00.008-04:00

Here’s a special note to the Republican Party, its Congressional leadership, fellow-travellers like Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh, big Pharma and the insurance industry as the Senate Finance Committee prepares to debate the public option on Tuesday:

Every 12 minutes, your delays kill a fellow American who doesn’t have access to health care due to a lack of coverage.

While totally irrational tea baggers claim Pres. Obama is somehow both a Commie and a Nazi, as a result of a new study those of us in the reality-based world can hold up a sign of, say, H. Edward Hanway, chairman and chief executive of CIGNA Corp., or any other industry CEO, with the phrase “Helped Kill 5 People This Hour” scribbled underneath the photo. While we might be as tasteless as the poppycock protesters on the rampaging right, at least we’d be accurate.

Who says so? No less an authority than Harvard University's medical school.

According to new Harvard University research released Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, in roughly the time it takes to read this article, one American dies of not having health insurance or access to care. Take two down if you are a slow reader.

One of the co-authors, Dr. David Himmelstein who is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, observes, "The Institute of Medicine, using older studies, estimated that one American dies every 30 minutes from a lack of health insurance. Even this grim figure now is an underestimate. Now, one dies every 12 minutes."

Deader Than In Iraq

In 2009, the nation claiming to provide the best medical care in the word simply killed nearly 45,000 people, dead because they couldn’t afford insurance or medical care. The previous study was done in 2004. So, in less than a half-decade, the death rate caused by not having health insurance more than doubled.

In case the intellectually challenged GOP still doesn’t get it, Dr. Himmelstein put it in real simple terms, telling Reuters, "We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than (by) drunk driving and homicide combined.”

Or, in language even the GOP can’t help but comprehend, the lack of health insurance kills nearly nine times more people in the US every year than the total who died in Iraq and Afghanistan combined since 2001.

Overall, researchers find that American adults age 64 or younger who lack health insurance have a 40% higher risk of death than those with coverage. Those are close to the high mortality rates for smokers and drug addicts.

Another co-author of Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler – who also teaches medicine at Harvard and is a physician in Cambridge MA – compared the situation in America with the rest of the world.

"Historically,” Dr. Woolhandler says, “every other developed nation has achieved universal health care through some form of non-profit national health insurance. Our failure to do so means that all Americans pay higher health care costs and 45,000 pay with their lives."

The Baucus Caucus

Don’t think that Blue Dogs and ConservaDems – who should rightly be renamed ObstructaDems – are faultless here.

In exchange for the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to them as campaign contributions by the health insurance industry and the rest of the medico-industrial complex, they are complicit in the killing of sick people in their own country – including residents of their own state or district.

And Max Baucus manages to keep a straight face while proposing a subsidy to insurance companies by requiring everyone to buy a policy from one of them.

An executive at Humana, a large health insurance company, who is not authorized to speak to the media told me confidently, “We can write a bare-bones policy on anyone, even people with cancer or bad hearts. We just set the premiums high enough, put the deductible in the $10,000 per year range, have a 30% co-pay on everything else, and take 90 days to pay proviers. It’ll be a license to print money.”

In other words, the Baucus Caucus’ brilliant idea of providing coverage to all means that somebody who is diagnosed with cancer and runs up $100,000 in medical bills one year for exams, tests, chemo, radiation and possibly surgery, will be out of pocket somewhere around forty grand. And the insurance companies become legalized thieves that would make Wall St. financiers whose tricky default swaps and goofy mortgages that damn near bankrupted the world in 2008 seem like philanthropists by comparison.

Poll after poll shows overwhelming voter support for a true public option. The question is whether the Baucus Caucus, Blue Dogs, ObstructaDems and a few courageous Republicans such as Olympia Snowe are paying attention.

UPDATE 6: Palin’s As Goofy In Hong Kong As She Is At Home

2009-09-24T11:05:00.001-04:00

While Muammar Quaddafi was boring UN delegates with a meandering 90-minute speech in New York yesterday, it seems that half a world away Sarah Palin was doing the same thing in Hong Kong.

Palin was paid a reported $300,000 – I assume that’s American dollars, not Hong Kong – to speak for 90 minutes to a meeting of investors convened by a local brokerage firm. Although closed to the press, today’s New York Times carries a fairly flattering report based on its reporter speaking with a Canadian who listened to her speech.

Not nearly as flattering is the account of her talk that I found in an e-mail this morning from an old friend who I met in the 1990s when I was travelling to Hong Kong three or four times a year.

According to JoAnne, large numbers of Americans walked out during her speech, Europeans were whispering and laughing amongst themselves, and Chinese investors – who, culturally, are too polite to walk out on anyone giving a talk no matter how boring, frivolous or yammering the speaker might be – turned their attention to BlackBerry’s or one of the many other electro-gizmo’s that Hong Kong business people are so fond of that most restaurants require cell phones to be checked before seating a patron.

The Times account overlooked some of these details that put Palin’s reception in perspective.

Here is the e-mail, with irrelevant matters like stuff about her job and family edited out, and a few typos corrected.

To: Charley James
From: JoAnne X. XXXXXXXXX
Date: 24 Sept 2009
Subj: Sarah’s A Yawn in Hong Kong

Hey CJ from a different day in HK
…

There she was at last, a life size replica of Tina Fey up on stage wearing something almost tasteful but definitely small townish bought from what must have been the softer side of Sears. (Thanks for the line – I’ve been using it for years!) No one in the room who wasn’t from North America knew quite what to expect; a few Yanks apparently did because a trickle of them got up and left as she was being introduced.

Suspecting what would be coming, I was tempted to join them but decided to hear what Her Craziness had to say.

I’d give you some specifics but there weren’t many. Basically, she gave a stump speech that might have worked at a Chamber of Commerce lunch in Juneau but left a room full of highly educated, very sophisticated and worldly business people scratching their heads. If she intended to use the speech as a way to build credentials as a foreign policy expert, Sarah could have stayed home and avoided the jetlag. The South China Morning Post called her speech “a triumph of low expectations.”

She talked about health care reform and actually brought up death panels, much to the deep befuddlement of Asians in the audience. And the anger of Americans, another dozen of whom got up and stalked out. After the speech, several local execs asked me if the US actually has death panels for the sick and elderly, an abhorrent idea to people who revere not just the aged but their ancestors. It took me several minutes

A lot of her colloquial references were lost on the crowd. She kept talking about “Main St.” which means nothing in Asia or even Europe, for that matter. Somebody should have told her to change the reference to something local, like “Aberdeen” or “Kowloon side” because people kept looking at each other wondering what the fuck she meant about Main St.

As for foreign policy, she pretty much kept that under wraps. At least she didn’t tell the crowd she can see Russia from her porch in case Putin rears his head in American air space. She touched on the virtues of war in Iraq and Afghanistan just long enough to get glowers from an unsympathic audience, mumbled something about North Korea and China that was a total non-compute … that’s when I looked around on purpose and, sure enough, spotted two or three people from China’s State Security Bureau in the audience taking furious notes – they’re always at speeches and always easy to spot in their ill-fitting, poorly made suits sporting bad haircuts …

…

Anyhooo … after she finished she took some pre-arranged questions giving pap answers to pap questions, signed a few autographs and posed for photos – well, this is Asia after all, everybody takes photos of everything – and then was out the door.

…

Not sure what anyone was expecting other than seeing an American celebrity famous for gaffes, white trash relatives and shooting Bullwinkle from helicopters. If you didn’t expect much, you got what you came for.

That’s the news that’s fit to print. I have no idea why she flew over here for the speech except for the money. If I were a sponsor, I’d have asked for a partial refund. Well, at least she finished her speech and didn’t quit half-way through because she wanted to do something else.

Best,
J

So there it is: Sarah Does Hong Kong. Sounds as if she was her usual informed, thoughtful self, spending as much time discussing serious issues overseas as she did when she was campaigning.

We're Number 37!!!

2009-09-23T14:37:00.001-04:00

This has been making the rounds of the intertubes for a day or two but it's so good, it is worth reposting here.

New Study: Public Option Popular In Blue Dog Districts, Across Nation

2009-09-21T12:36:00.001-04:00

Poll analyst wunderkinder Nate Silver teams up with Markos Moulitsos of Daily Kos today to discover the public option enjoys the support of a majority of voters in all but one Blue Dog district.

Moreover, despite the pronouncements of Blue Dog Democrats in the House and Senate – as well as by Republicans – a health insurance public option is wanted by a majority of voters across all but a small handful of the 435 Congressional districts.

Moulitos writes this morning that “Nate Silver determined that poverty levels and support for Barack Obama were the factors driving support for the public option. A few mathematical equations later, he projected support for the public option (widespread nationally) and declared as a result that, contrary to assertions, the public option is popular in most Blue Dog districts.

“The Blue Dogs have been fighting the good fight on behalf of the insurance companies, doing everything they can to stymie reform. When called to task for their anti-reform efforts, they hide behind their constituents, claiming they are simply representing the views of their constituents. We were curious – is there any truth to these claims? As we've seen, in some places (like Nebraska), it's true, but in others, like in Jim Cooper's Tennessee district, it's not,” Moulitos concludes.

As if any more proof were needed, these new numbers show that opponents of the public option are simply running a well-organized scam for the insurance industry.

Even in districts where Blue Dogs claim to be simply representing the will of their constituents, the numbers prove them to be liars. And while there are margins of error in any poll, the fact is that in almost every district support for a public option outweighs opposition by more than the margin – or the “Keith Number” as Keith Olbermann called the undecided’s plus the margin of error during the last election.

Isn’t it w-a-y past time for the president, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to call out Democrat opponents for what they are: Lying shills who are in the pocket of insurance companies, and who have no regard for the problems of their constituents.

What A Surprise! “Values Voters” Pick Racist Huckabee

2009-09-21T10:10:00.006-04:00

The so-called “Values Voters” held their annual hate-in and what a surprise: Mike Huckabee won the straw poll of presidential contenders, taking 148 of the 500 votes cast, a whopping 28%.

Huckabee, the silver-tongued, jovial Baptist preacher now best known for losing weight, charmed the crowd gathered in Washington over Rosh Hashanah weekend –Shanatova, en shallah to all – by dog whistling coded racist messages that wowed folks in the ballroom.

This is nothing new for Huckabee, who’s trying desperately to be the GOP’s Great White Hope in 2012 now that Sarah Palin has become a caricature of herself. As Max Blumenthal pointed out in The Nation during last year’s Republican presidential primary season. Borrowing a page from George Bush’s 2000 primary playbook that short-circuited John McCain’s surging campaign, Blumental reported how far Huckabee was willing to go:

As South Carolina's Republican primary election draws nearer, Mike Huckabee has ratcheted up his appeals to the racial nationalism of white evangelicals.

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," the former Arkansas governor told a Myrtle Beach crowd on January 17, referring to the Confederate flag. "If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole. That's what we'd do."

Appealing to white racists is old hat for Huckabee.

Long before he was a nationally-known politician, Huckabee carefully nurtured a relationship with America's largest white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens. The extent of Huckabee's relationship with the racist group is unclear but he accepted an invitation to speak at the group's annual conference in 1993 and delivered a videotaped address that was "extremely well received by the audience,” according to reports at the time.

No wonder he took the straw poll that, in the final analysis, is representative of absolutely nothing.

Whose Values?

Exactly whose values do the voters gathered in DC think they represent?

Certainly not mine. I consider myself a “values voter,” which is why I gleefully cast my ballot for Barack Obama last November. His values reflect the best of what America is supposed to be all about.

Oh, wait. The “Value Voters” summit didn’t even pretend to be about my values because I’m not a right wing fundamentalist who thinks the earth is 8,000 years old and America was really founded as a Christian theocracy. That’s probably why I didn’t see any black or brown faces in crowd shots, nor folks named Schwartz or Lopez as registered delegates. Nor were any of the opening prayers offered by Imans.

A few actual American values were overlooked on the weekend.

Apparently, they weren’t very concerned about genuine Judeo-Christian values, either. Nowhere on the agenda was there mention of discussing Sen. David Vitter wearing diapers with a hooker or his name on the DC Madame’s list. Nothing was said about Sen. John Ensign’s dalliances or "gifts" to his mistress and her family. How about Sen. Mike Enzi, who admitted having an affair with a female staff member? What about Gov. Mark Sanford’s hikes on the Appalachian Trail with his Latin Lover, sometimes at taxpayer expense?

How come nobody spent time discussing the righteousness of 20,000 people in the US dying each year because they lacked access to health care? Why didn’t anyone raise the very Christian value issue of helping 1-million Americans forced into bankruptcy by medical expenses? Where was talk about the values of the money changers in Wall St. temples grabbing seven-to-nine figure bonuses as they destroyed the lives and economic security of tens of millions of their fellow citizens? Who brought up the values that should be used to fight to poverty, hunger, homelessness and helping those who are without hope?

There was plenty of time to bash the government and an African-American President but no time to deal with the real issues confronting the nation.

Those are some values that sad collection of so-called “value voters” put on display.

Cut The Crap: Compared To America, Canada’s Health Care Is A Utopian Dream.

2009-09-16T15:58:00.003-04:00

It’s time for a truth-and-reality check on conservative crazies in Congress, on Fox and loose in the country who keep using the Canadian national health system as their example of why they object to making major reforms to America’s medico-insurance complex.

I’ve experienced health care on both sides of the 49th parallel and can tell you that, compared to what happens when you get sick in the US, Canada is utopia.

While films such as Michael Moore’s Sicko and Capitalism: A Love Story and shorts produced by Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films do much spotlight the problem in bold face terms, the need to change the health care delivery and payment system in the US is essentially the collected nightmare stories of millions of individuals and families.

My sister was one of them.

Denied!

When my sister and only sibling was diagnosed with cancer in 1999, she and her husband had major battles with their insurance company which fought tooth-and-nail to cancel coverage and deny care at sight of the first claim form.

Why?

Because in her original application – roughly 10 or 11 years earlier – the insurer discovered that she forgot to note that, at age eight, she had two sessions with a child psychologist after our family dog died. She had real trouble coping: Tarzan taught her to walk when she was an infant, letting her hang onto his back as he walked her slowly around the house. As a pre-schooler, she’d dress him in outfits for tea parties – the kind little girls have, not Glenn Beck’s monstrosities. When Tarzan died, it was her first experience with losing a loved one and she couldn’t stop crying, even a week later at school.

To the insurance company, which went rummaging through Janice’s past after collecting more than $60,000 in premiums over the years she was a policyholder, that oversight meant she was a scamming liar trying to defraud them. It relented only after being confronted by a series of insistent phone calls from her oncologist and increasingly strong letters from the family lawyer. Nevertheless, the fight took weeks, causing Janice and Steve enormous grief and worry – on top of worrying about Jan’s cancer.

But it didn’t end there.

After being told she was terminal, Janice wanted to die at home in familiar surroundings with her three cats on the bed and her husband of 17-years sitting in the room. Nope, the insurance company ruled. They’d pay for her to stay in a hospital wired to machines and tubes at roughly $2,000 a day or more but the $150 or so it’d cost to have a nurse come each morning to check Jan’s vitals and a health care worker every afternoon to stay while Steve ran errands, bought food and have a few minutes away from his gruesome death watch was verboten.

A Supreme Irony

How ironic.

At first, the company wasn’t willing to pay anything yet when given a chance to reduce its expenses to less than 10% of what they were running, they balked. A bizarre-o world example of what’s wrong with health insurance in the US.

So, there ensued another series of letters between their lawyer and the insurer and, this time, also her employer, threatening legal action and public exposure. Reluctantly, the insurance company backed down. To its credit, the senior vice president of human resources at the large corporation where Janice worked before getting sick phoned to say that he was appalled at learning of the treatment she was receiving and assured Steve that if the insurance company didn’t pay for home care, the employer would.

In a way, Janice and Steve were “lucky.”

Besides having a caring employer, they had the resources and toughness to summon a lawyer to go toe-to-toe with the insurer. And, in the end, her care was covered. But, like Barack Obama’s mother, Jan and Steve spend much of the 11 weeks leading to the end of her life fighting with an enormous insurance company bureaucracy and its “medical advisors” who never clapped eyes on Janice before trying to deny what she’d been paying years to have. Happy to take money from her pay check every month for her share of the premium, the insurance company fought desperately when it was time to meet its end of the deal.

The best system in the world? Only people who never had the misfortune of dealing with it would say so. They must be the people in surveys who say they like their current insurance.

Meanwhile, Up North

Walk across the road where Minnesota meets Ontario and enter an entirely different world of health care.

I’ve lived in Toronto since 1991, during which time my out-of-pocket costs for health care have been zero. Nothing. Nada. Zip. This includes more than a year seeing a psychiatrist for depression and grief after my sister died; she passed away six months after mother and three years following our dad’s death, and I was overwhelmed. It also includes two separate hospitalizations for heart problems, one very minor and one more serious. And I’ve been fighting colon cancer with chemo, radiation and surgery for four-plus years.

None of my care has cost me anything. I never waited to see a specialist, or to have tests or treatment. When surgery was prescribed, I saw another doctor for a second option and was still on an operating table within two weeks.

Before the right goes all batty and begins yelling I pay for coverage through income tax, I’ll admit that I do. But – and this is a big but, much larger than the butts on the back ends of many of the 9/12-er’s waddling around Washington last weekend – I did the math and my total cost of taxes plus insurance is less than in America.

Yes, my federal and provincial taxes are higher than if I lived in the US. But what I pay includes the cost of government health insurance. So, when I looked at US and Minnesota tax tables – Minnesota being my last state of residence in America before moving here – and added in the average of what friends back home tell me they pay annually in health insurance premiums, I pay about 9% less in Canada than if I lived in the States.

Nine percent less.

Never Cancelled

My coverage never can be cancelled or denied. I pay no deductible. There’s no such thing as a pre-existing condition. I had coverage the first day I arrived in Toronto after filling out a short, half-page form. I never heard the words “Not in our network” when seeing a physician or specialist.

When I was ill, no one went scrounging through my past to find a reason to deny coverage. When I am discharged from hospital, the only thing I receive is a warm handshake and a sincere, “We’re glad you’re doing so well.”

I did have some oput-of-pocket costs. I paid for cable television in my room, a morning newspaper, a vegetarian pizza from a place near the hospital and a few Chinese food deliveries after being taken off the restricted diet list. If I’d had high speed internet in my room, I would have paid for it myself; national health doesn’t cover surfing the net.

Shortcomings

Utopia? No. Only when compared to the US health system nightmare. And there are problems with the Canadian system.

For example, Ontario is short of doctors. It’s not because of a brain drain but because of the physicians themselves. The College of Physicians and Surgeons, the licensing board in all of the provinces, for many years made it nearly impossible for immigrating doctors to practice here, a kind of closed shop protectionism.

The rationale – often justified – was that foreign trained physicians and surgeons don’t meet Ontario standards. Fair enough. But then the College required people to start med school all over again, as if they’d never treated a patient.

Most of these physicians readily admit they need additional training when arriving in Canada. But why force them to start a 10 year process of med school, internship and residency all over again? I suspect that human anatomy is the same at a university in, oh, Kenya, Mumbai or Jamaica as it is at the University of Toronto.

Fortunately, the government stepped in to apply pressure on the Colleges. Now, additional training is handled much more swiftly and the doctor shortage is starting to ease.

Constant Claptrap

Trial lawyers joke that when the facts are against you, argue the law; when the law is against you, argue the facts; and when the law and the facts are against you, then pound the table.

The anti-change artists in the health care debate are left pounding the table because everything is against them. But there’s no talking with most of them because they react like small children: They cover their ears, scream loudly to drown out what’s being said and stamp their feet. It’s their only genuine argument.

The arguments against making major changes to the medico-insurance complex are about as accurate as Glenn Beck’s crowd count. I’m not sure it will do any good but we have to keep trying. For one thing, since I’m uninsurable in the US until I’m eligible for Medicare, I can’t come home until there’s a rational new plan in place.

GOP Warns Collins, Snowe: Oppose Health Care Or Face Primary Challenges

2009-09-15T16:17:00.004-04:00

Now we have proof positive that the crazies grabbed control of the asylum as bullies shake down and thump – not entirely figuratively – Republicans in the halls of the US Senate.

Maine’s two usually reasonable and moderate Republican Senators – Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe – spent the summer trying to find ways to support health care reform, including some form of a public option. Suddenly, they did an abrupt about-face: No public option, no non-profit co-ops, no triggers, no anything in the bill they’d previously supported.

So what happened?

“Last week, they were bombarded with calls, elevator and hallway chats, and e-mails from the RNC, the Senate leadership, other Senators, people on the party’s Senate campaign committee, serious donors,” a GOP Senate staffer explains to me Tuesday afternoon by phone.

“Basically, the message was the same” he insists. “Support health care in any form and face serious, well-funded primary challenges when they’re up for re-election.”

(As an aside, the Senate Republican Campaign Committee used to be run by John Ensign, resident of the infamous C Street Home For The Perpetually Bewildered, and best known for sleeping with an aide, hiring her 19-year old son as a “strategic consultant” to the SRCC, firing another aide who happened to be married to the woman Ensign was hiking the Appalachian Trail with, and then having his mommy and daddy provide $96,000 in “gifts” to the aides and two of their three children to smooth everything over. So we know how the SRCC operation works.)

Republicans Are Fringe

Since Snowe’s term expires in 2012 and Collins isn’t up for re-election until 2014, that seems like a long spell for the goofball right of the Republican party in Maine to stay mad. After all, Snowe received 74% of the vote when she was re-elected in 2006, a year when Republicans all over the country were being booted from office without so much as a good riddance.

“Because you’re not part of the party, you don’t know how it operates these days,” the man reminds me.

“The fringe is the party,” he says, the emphasis his. “Between now and 2012 or 2014, the goofballs can show up at every town meeting, state fair and garage door opening ceremony either one of them attends. Their life would become a living hell.”

The staffer would not let his name be used because he’s not authorized to speak with reporters, nor would the five other people who work on the Republican side of the Senate who essentially confirmed his comments. But I’ve known each of them for years, trust information they provide because each has always been accurate, and none have an axe to grind.

Calls to Senators Snowe and Collins were not returned by the time I posted this article. But I was directed to a statement on Snowe’s website that claims if, “after we have implemented landmark insurance market reforms, private insurers fail to deliver the affordable coverage Americans require” she would support, maybe, down-the-road, possibly something that resembles a public option.

That would be when? Maybe in 2066, on the millennial anniversary of Magna Carta? How many more than the 62-million already uninsured and underinsured Americans will never see a doctor, die, file for bankruptcy or go to bed every night hoping their kids don’t get sick tomorrow before Snowe and her colleague Susan Collins see the world as it really is?

Ashamed

In her website statement, Snowe also trots out the totally discredited notion that reform will lead “to a government takeover of health care.”

No wonder another GOP-side Senate staffer confesses to me, a touch of sadness in her voice, “Right now, I’m ashamed to be a Republican.”

Despite the fact that this same staff member gave her full-throated support to the McCain-Palin ticket and that didn’t seem to shame her, nor did George Bush’s eight years, I am willing to accept that some sort of divine intervention leading to her Come To Jesus awakening in the spirit in which she offers it. Better late than never.

Oh wait. Maybe she’s seeing the light because her brother-in-law and sister are struggling to cope with medical bills: Their 10-year old was diagnosed with leukemia earlier this year and there’s a constant fight with the insurance company supposedly providing coverage to pay for the child’s treatment.

I know what that’s like. I’ve been through it with my sister.

Snowe Job

I’m not sure what Snowe and Collins are up to but, clearly, it has nothing to do with what is best for one-fifth of the American population directly and the rest of us indirectly.

Sadly, the Snowe Job being pulled is totally uncharacteristic of both Senators. In the past, they’ve acted like Responsible Republicans most of the time – even when I disagreed with them. Now, they’ve become no better than the louts who got their mad on in Washington Saturday afternoon. The fear Snowe and Collins have of that small but vocal slice of the Republican Party is driving them to put their own interests ahead of those of the nation.

There is an irony to this.

Dick Cheney spent eight years scaring Americans into doing what the GOP wanted. Now, the GOP is scaring Republicans into doing what a tiny minority of lunatics want them to do and the hell with the rest of us.

It'd be much funnier if it wasn't so sad.

Teabaggers In The Mist - Updated 9.15.09

2009-09-14T11:11:00.005-04:00

Glenn Beck once insisted that he started his “9/12 Movement” to recapture the sense of unity in the nation the day after the terrorist attacks in 2001. That idea lasted about four minutes Saturday morning as evidenced by the signs held aloft at the event he and a group of well-funded astroturf organisations in Washington created.

Thanks to Oliver Willis’ website, we have a disturbing record of just how bizarre and out-of-touch the ragtag and often racist crowd of batty birthers, deathers, tenthers, climate change deniers, Federal Reserve haters, anti-abortionists, pro gunners and the just plain kooky turned out to be.

Like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-Crazyland). He actually autographed a sign that reads “We Are A Christian Nation.”

Over at RedState, people are claiming that two million protesters showed up. The police estimated the crowd at about 75,000.

I realised that the most disturbing thing about Willis’ photo essay is that the people whose signs he captured on film - OK, I'm showing my age; he probably captured them on disc - are allowed to own checking accounts, sign contracts, own passports and have children.

UPDATE - I've decided that my two favourite characters from Saturday's Mad On Washington are the old lady carrying a sign reading "Keep Government Out Of Medicare!" and a fellow in his late 60s who is in a YouTube video declaring to a questioner that he'll stop cashing his Social Security cheques when the government stops interfering in his life.

The Only Way Out Of Afghanistan Is To Leave. Here’s How.

2009-09-13T17:50:00.005-04:00

There’s a reason why Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.

From the time of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan to the British, Soviets and now the US and NATO, Afghanistan’s poppy fields, barren plains and rugged mountains are filled with the ghosts and treasuries of would-be conquerors. Sooner or later, America, Canada and NATO will meet the same dismal fate as everyone who went before them.

George Bush invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to rid it of al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors, taking away a “safe haven” for plotters of the 9/11 attacks. Since this was accomplished in a matter of weeks with relatively few American deaths, Bush’s neo-con puppet masters then made two disastrous mistakes.

First, they sent troops off to fight a stupid, illegal and totally unnecessary war in Iraq, a country which posed as much threat to the US as Bermuda, with no plan for bringing stability to a country stripped of its institutions.

Second, Washington installed a pretend government in Kabul to create a democracy by forcing a strong, central government on the nation – something that is an anathema to the very soul, nature and character of dozens of centuries of Afghan history.

To keep voters from becoming as questioning as they are now, once the Taliban was gone Bush marketed the Afghan War by claiming it is about democracy, women’s rights, education and nation building. President Obama still says the US is in Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda. But al Qaeda barely exists; its handful of members long ago decamped to Pakistan’s unruly and ungoverned tribal regions.

In fact, this war has become all about oil pipeline routes and Western domination of the energy-rich Caspian Basin. And, of course, there is pressure on Obama from the right that the US cannot afford to “lose” a second war under his command. So he seems to feel that his only option is charging full-tilt over a cliff. Unless he ends this daft misadventure, his granddaughters may see American soldiers still fighting in the badlands of Afghanistan.

Put bluntly, Afghanistan is a bloody mess and America, Canada and NATO add to the problem every day. It’s way past time for us to go home.

Buy Poppies

Before any stability can be returned to the country, the Taliban and other insurgents in the south have to be cut off from their cash flow: Opium smuggling.

Since drug dealers, traffickers and customers are protected by corrupt officials in Kabul and provincial capitals, the only realistic answer is for America and NATO to become poppy farmer’s highest paying customer. It’s a tactic that was wildly successful in Turkey and it can work in Afghanistan, as well.

Some small part of the crop can be resold to pharmaceutical companies which use opium as an ingredient in many legal drugs; the rest can be burned. It’s far cheaper than the current cost of the war. Moreover, within a year, the West will bankrupt the Taliban by deriving it of the estimated $300-million the illegal drugs trade produces and which it uses to buy weapons, food, pay bribes – and buy next year’s poppy crop.

On an on-going basis, America and, hopefully, the EU can subsidise Afghan farmers to grow other crops, using our vast knowledge of agriculture to teach people who still live in the third century how to feed themselves and, eventually, their nation. Again, it’s a far less-expensive venture than fighting a hopeless, unending war even though this may become a semi-permanent part of America’s foreign policy.

As crucial, buying up the poppy crop for a few years will make it incredibly difficult for the Taliban to re-supply, re-equip and re-emerge as a potent force in the region. If destitute farmers and unemployed teens can’t find piece work burying IEDs or launching RGPs for the Taliban, much of its amateur infantry who get paid $5 a day to kill foreign troops will disappear.

The Pashtun

Once the opium supply is controlled and eradicated, the US should put on hold the fruitless task of building up the central government and even most provincial governments, turning its attention instead to bolstering Afghanistan’s traditional source of political power: Tribal leaders.

Like most of its foreign policy, the Bush Administration was wrong-headed about handling Afghanistan once the Taliban were routed. Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes, who make up 55% of the population, were excluded from power as Washington deceived itself into believing that a strong, central government could be created where one never existed.

The neo-con’s never grasped that Afghanistan is a three-legged ethnic stool and, by removing the Pashtun leg, stability became impossible. It's the same misunderstanding that led to carnage in Iraq after Washington banned Sunni's from participating in rebuilding their country.

There will be neither peace nor stability until the Pashtun majority is enfranchised. This means dealing directly with Taliban, which is largely Pashtun. The West cannot run Afghanistan by using the minority Tajik’s, Uzbek’s and Shia Hazara.

The solution to this no-longer-necessary war is not more phoney elections but a comprehensive peace agreement between ethnic factions that largely restores the status quo before the 1979 Soviet invasion. This means a weak central government in Kabul – for which Hamud Karzai is ideal – and a high degree of autonomy for self-governing regions.

Instead of pretending that Kabul governs any of the country beyond its suburbs, the government should reinstate the loya jirga, or regular, tribal sit-downs. Decisions are made by consensus, often after lengthy haggling. This is the tradition of Afghans and many Islamic societies. Afghanistan worked pretty well for several thousand years under this traditional, informal and easy-going system.

Historical Reality

There’ll have to be a quid pro quo with the tribes beyond buying the opium crop, teaching farmers how to grow other vegetables and short-circuiting the Karzai government.

First, integrate the Pashtun back into civil society. At the moment, the Taliban are the ethnic group’s only voice.

Second, stop all drone attacks on insurgent targets where civilians always end up bearing the brunt of the bombings.

Third, make it clear to tribal leaders that the US doesn’t care about their disputes with other tribes, and won’t interfere as long as it doesn’t spill over into killing American and NATO forces.

Fourth, recognise that cash goes a long way to buy loyalty in Afghanistan. It always has and always will. Just as the US did in Iraq with Sunni militias, put the tribal leaders on Washington’s payroll – with the understanding that killing of Americans will stop immediately. It worked in Anbar and other Sunni provinces and it will work in Afghanistan.

Fifth, pay bonuses to tribal leaders – and members – if they provide actionable intelligence about Taliban activities in their area. But before anyone is hauled off to the infamous prison at Baghram Air Base, make sure that someone isn't trying to settle an old score as happened regularly in 2001 and 2002,

Sixth, use US and NATO ground forces to secure areas where needed but rely on the tribes to police themselves.

Seventh, at a loya jirga – rather than in Karzai’s presidential palace – ask Afghan elders to draw up a list of benchmarks that establish when and under what circumstances Western forces will leave. It may take months to achieve a final agreement but, in the meantime, it’s likely that violence will decline slowly and, at the end, a close-to-peace and stability situation will endure.

We won’t solve Afghanistan’s social or political problems by continuing to wage a cruel and apparently endless war. Our soldiers will never be able to change Afghanistan’s social behavior or end tribal customs that go back thousands of years. They are too busy defending their own bases from angry Afghans and it’s time to leave them alone.

Toronto Film Festival: Moore’s "Capitalism" Will Infuriate Wingnuts Because It's Accurate

2009-09-12T15:39:00.014-04:00

Michael Moore has a gift for maintaining two things that people easily lose in times of crisis: Perspective and a sense of humor. Along with his deadly accuracy, it is those two qualities that drive the right wing totally batty.

In 1989, American workers were reeling from Reaganomics that enriched the wealthy, undermined the middle class and had outright contempt for the poor. That was when Moore arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) with Roger & Me tucked under his arm, Moore’s directorial debut which deployed humor like a weapon of mass distribution. He won the People's Choice Award at TIFF and went on to become America’s foremost agent provocateur with Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Slackers and Sicko.

At the 20th anniversary of his debut, the gap between rich and poor is only widening.

Every day brings more layoffs, foreclosures and financial scandals. The desperate conditions in the Flint, Michigan of Roger & Me now are replicated across America, hitting every color collar in the middle class – blue, white, green, polka dot. Back in ‘89, Moore's target was GM. This year, it's the whole system. And he hasn't lost his wit or his jaundiced view of what’s wrong in the United States.

In Capitalism: A Love Story, which premiers Sunday night at TIFF, Moore is at his best. He’s come far in the last 20 years. Moore’s new doc was slotted at 9PM on the first Sunday of the festival in a prime venue, a time and location typically reserved for high-concept blockbusters starring George Clooney or Jodi Foster. When he brought Roger & Me to Toronto in 1989, it was shown on a midweek morning at a small, remote, dirty theatre that smelled of stale popcorn oil and urine, and not easily reached by car, public transit or moose.

The new film explores another taboo question that will make the right wing go apeshit yet again: What price does America pay for its love of capitalism?

When I was a kid, capitalism meant job security, a home and big yard in the suburbs paid for with one salary, a shiny new car in the drive, decent health care benefits and a secure pension at retirement.

Now, as financial institutions run amok and families lose their savings, the American dream is more of a nightmare. Moore takes us into the lives of ordinary people whose worlds were turned upside down by the economy before looking for explanations in Washington, Wall Street and around the nation. He pays particular attention to the 2008 bank bailout during the waning days of the Bush administration. Was this really the best hope for America, or just another money grab by the wealthiest in our nation?

In a film filled with countless memorable moments, one that is foremost in my mind is when Moore stands before the AIG building in lower Manhattan, bullhorn in hand to announce he’s come to make a citizen arrest of the entire AIG board of directors.

The audience at the special screening I attended howled and applauded at the scene and, in fact, as the credits rolled the picture was greeted with an admiring, loud and sustained ovation.

Moore has a knack for finding a fresh angle on familiar headlines. Even in an age with the excesses of Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Malkin and Bachman, he has the ability to shock. But for all the harsh realities that he reports, his films still empower audiences. By drawing communities together in theatres, he reminds us that there is strength in our numbers.

But perhaps best of all, Capitalism: A Love Story will infuriate bloviators on the right like Glenn "Crazy Mouth" Beck, Lou "I'm Always Right And You're Always Wrong" Dobbs, Rush "Fatty Arbuckel" Limbaugh, Bill "Liar" O'Reilly, and both Michelle's - "I Am The Lunatic Fringe" Malkin and "Never Think Before Speaking" Bachman, because it is an accurate portrayal of how far wrong America has gone.
________________________________________________________

Production Credits
Executive Producers: Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein
Producers: Michael Moore, Anne Moore
Written By: Michael Moore
Cinematographer: Dan Marracino, Jayme Roy
Editors: John Walter, Conor O'Neill, Alex Meillier, Tanya Ager Meillier, Jessica Brunetto
Sound: Francisco LaTorre, Mark Roy, Hillary Stewart
Music: Jeff Gibbs

Gov Tim Pawlenty On The 10th Amendment

2009-09-12T09:37:00.006-04:00

I grew up in Minnesota and since it was my last place of residence in the US, still vote in the state.

After hearing the radio interview this week where Gov. Tim Pawlenty - rumoured to be considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 - joined the so-called "tenthers" I sent this e-mail to him this morning. Fraser Hall is (or was, at the time I was there) the law school at the University of Minnesota.

--- On Sat, 9/12/09, Charley James wrote ---

Subject: Your Comment On The 10th Amendment
To: tim.pawlenty@state.mn.us
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2009, 9:23 AM

Dear Gov. Pawlenty,

I heard your radio interview this week in which you asserted that the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives states the power to not participate in federal health reform legislation.

Were you in hospital the week they taught Constitutional law at Fraser Hall where you supposedly received a J.D? Don’t you remember what was taught about the 10th Amendment? The Supreme Court hasn't held truck with plaintiffs using it to block Congressional action since before the Civil War.

When I was an undergrad at the UofM, I tested into a graduate school seminar on the Constitution in the Political Science department and wrote a paper on the 10th Amendment: Basically, courts have held for more than 100 years that it's usurped by Article 1, which gives Congress the power to regulate commerce and promote the general welfare. I received an “A” on the paper and I’d be happy to send a copy of it to you to refresh your memory. In case I can’t locate it quickly, you might want to read a bit of Thomas Jefferson or look up the Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the federal income tax.

Such nonsense comments are unworthy of a governor, or at least one who isn’t governor of Texas. They may play well with the fringe, right wing base that votes in Republican presidential primaries but they make you sound like an utter fool, and an uneducated one at that.

Sincerely,
Charley James

Somehow, I suspect Pawlenty is more interested in the impact of his idiotic comments on the GOP's dwindling base of lunatics than he is in my comments. If I hear back, I'll let you know.

Do As I Say, Not As My Wife Does

2009-09-07T12:53:00.010-04:00

I grew up in Minneapolis and worked on my first political campaigns there – JFK and a man named Don Fraser who unseated a long-time Republican Congressman, a zealous anti-Communist named Walter Judd, in the 5th Congressional District in 1962. So I’m always amazed that the same state which produced Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Walter Mondale and Amy Klobuchar also turns out the likes of Jesse Ventura, Michelle Bachman and Tim Pawlenty.

Thus, I wasn’t entirely surprised when CBS News reported that Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty – sometimes said to be a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2012 – got his tidy whities in a bunch because the President of the United States wants to talk to some returning school kids on Tuesday.

“At a minimum it’s disruptive, number two, it’s uninvited and number three, if people would like to hear his message they can, on a voluntary basis, go to YouTube or some other source and get it,” he told reporters at the Minnesota State Fair. “I don’t think he needs to force it upon the nation’s school children.”

Put in language without his dog whistles to the devout, Tim Pawlenty says he ain’t gonna let no darkie Muslim force socialism on his kids. Powerful words, Guv’ner.

But hey, wait: What’s this?

His wife Mary, the state’s first lady, visits elementary schools frequently to teach students about our system of democracy. The first lady focuses on expanding school children’s knowledge and understanding of the three branches of government, providing a special emphasis on the judiciary. She was a district court judge for 12 years, handling criminal, civil, family and juvenile matters.

Yikes! Mary Pawlenty has been running around the state disrupting and indoctrinating the children of Minnesota for years! Couldn’t she just do that on YouTube or something? I demand to see the complete text of each and every speech she gives from now on.

This is a perfect example of Pawlenty’s hypocrisy or, as Minnesotans call it, T-Pawcrisy. It's the same irritating rash that is Michelle Bachman (R-Goofyville), who recently lashed out angrily at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune for writing a flattering profile of her son who is working with Teach For America.

At the same State Fair, Bachman also cried out, “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists (so insurance and health care reform) will not pass.”

By all means, Michelle, slit your wrists. Please. I think there's still a Chicago Cutlery Store at Knollwood Mall if you need some equipment.

Cry, The Beloved Country

2009-08-28T08:49:00.007-04:00

“What is happening to America?” I ask myself while reading newspapers and scanning the intertubes from my sick bed where Canada’s national health plan is treating me at no cost, without any waiting times and without making me go before a death panel.

A crazy Kansas Congresswoman - a Republican, naturally, and she's not even Michelle Bachman - says her party is looking for a "great white hope."

In Virginia, a man wearing an Obama T-shirt at a town hall meeting is punched in the face without provocation by another man wearing an anti-abortion T-shirt.

Only days after Sen. Chuck Grassley tells an Iowa rally they should fear that health care reform will let the government “pull the plug on Grandma,” Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele is on the Today Show insisting “no elected Republican official has used scare tactics to frighten constituents into opposing the measure. I haven't."

Meanwhile, on the same day, the RNC sends out an e-mail over Steele’s name and signature claiming health care reform is really an attempt to deny Republicans health care.

A man who tells a town hall meeting he is a "proud right wing terrorist" is applauded by the Republican Congressman holding the event instead of reporting the self-proclaimed terrorist to Homeland Security which is what Bush and Cheney did to nearly everyone who objected to their war of lies.

The lunatic lout who toted a semi-automatic weapon to an Obama rally in Arizona belongs to a church where, the previous Sunday, the pastor prayed for the death of the president, hoping "worms consume his soul."

The same fundamentalist Christian group that targeted the last abortion doctor to be killed - in his church, no less - has set its sights on another physician, including putting details of his home and phone, family photos and a map to his clinic on the web.

In a similar act of Christian charity, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is now against healthcare reform because it includes end-of-life counselling.

After Sarah Palin posts a condolence note about Ted Kennedy on her Facebook page, many of her "friends" leave comments such as "good riddance to bad rubbish," "Now, if we can only get Pelosi and Reid to join him" and "It's about time."

And all of this is in just the last few days.

Meanwhile, to my knowledge, only one elected Republican official has called for this to stop. I guess crazy is a pre-existing condition, as Paul Krugman notes in his blog.

Nothing good will come of this. And I am beginning to suspect that the United States is no country for an ailing old man like me, anymore.

The New Chevy Volt And An Old Nash Rambler

2009-08-12T10:46:00.002-04:00

GM is touting the Chevy Volt as getting 230 miles per gallon. Big deal. Been there, done that, never had to buy gasoline.

This is a tale of what could have been done a half-century ago - and wasn't - to save energy, save the planet and save billions of dollars.

In the late 1950s, my dad bought a new Nash Rambler. It had a thimble of gas in it so he filled the tank as soon as he left the dealer. A month later, the gas needle hadn't budged off full so he took it back thinking there was something wrong with the gague. Nope, it worked fine. Another month of driving and it was still showing more than 3/4 full. Back to the dealer, still nothing wrong.

Convinced there was something amiss, my dad stopped at a gas station to "fill 'er up" as people said in those days. (Windows got washed and oil checked, too, by "attendants" who often wore white uniforms and a cap.) It took less than a dollar to top up the tank. Totally befuddled, he kept driving but couldn't shake the feeling that at any moment the gas gague would suddenly show empty and he'd coast to a stop somewhere on a lonely highway late at night.

Until George Romney at The American Motors Co. sent him a letter.

It seemed that, somehow, an experimental car with a new engine that wasn't supposed to leave the factory did. Dad ended up buying it. Nash told him that if he'd return the car, he could pick any Nash model in the showroom - free, and Nash would pay off his $900 bank loan on the Rambler to boot. Acting out of greed rather than smarts, he immediately turned his then-five month old car in for a big, honking, gas guzzling, Nash Ambassador with huge fins and no loan. The Rambler's tank was still more than half full when he exchanged keys with the dealer.

Dad spent less than one dollar on gas in his five months of driving it, during which time he logged more than 10,000 miles.

American Motors and Nash have long-since disappeared. But if the auto industry could build that kind of fuel efficient, gas powered engine in the 1950s, why did it stop and why is the Volt such a big deal?

No, Mr. President, I Will Not "Back Off"

2009-08-06T07:41:00.003-04:00

Updated below.
__________

Dear Mr. President:

According to a senior White House staff member who attended Wednesday’s lunch with the Senate Democratic caucus, you told progressives to “back off” attacking Blue Dogs and ConservaDems for their opposition to meaningful health care reform including the desperately needed public option.

Say what?

No, Mr. President, I will not back off – and I assume other progressives, in and out of the Senate, along with 48-million uninsured Americans and 72% of the country who want a strong public option won’t either.

Please remember that progressives are the people who did much of the legwork during the primary and general election campaign, helping you get elected. In turn, your overwhelming victory enabled a lot of progressive House and Senate candidates to win, allowing the Democrats to take control of both houses of Congress. One of the reasons so many of us worked so tirelessly for nearly two exhausting years was because of your long-standing commitment to genuine change in the way health care is delivered and paid for in the United States.

We did not do this to let six members of the US Senate stand in your way, or ours. Six Senators who, by the way, happen to live in very small states yet receive millions in campaign contributions from the medical-insurance complex. One of them, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, even threatened the entire country with blocking health care reform forever because he got called out for stuffing his campaign coffers with more than $2.2-million from health insurers, medical device manufacturers, big Pharma, hospitals and doctors.

Nelson is simply the latest example of how the medical-insurance complex has managed to block health care reform for nearly 100 years, ever since Teddy Roosevelt first proposed it. This not what we had in mind when we responded to your call for "change we can believe in."

So we won’t back off, Mr. President. Instead, you should stand up.

Respectfully,
Charley James

UPDATE: At today's press briefing, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs walked back Pres. Obama's admonition to progressives to "back off" Blue Dogs blocking health care reform. Gibbs said the president was not referring to activists and other proponents of health care reform and a public option.

Confronted With Truth, Blue Dog Ben Nelson Throws Hissy Fit

2009-08-04T10:52:00.004-04:00

Since The White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seem unwilling to take on Blue Dogs blocking desperately needed public option from health care and insurance reform, the job of calling them out is falling to advocates and Keith Olbermann.

On Monday night, Olbermann’s Special Comment on Countdown took a rip at both Democrats and Republicans standing in the way of genuinely fixing America’s broken health care system because their campaign coffers are being enriched by the medical-insurance complex to the tune of millions of dollars.

But when the coalition group ActBlue began running TV spots in Nebraska and Washington DC highlighting Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson – one of the staunchest Republicans in the Democratic caucus – he threw a complete hissy fit. His spokesman, Jake Thompson, issued a statement threatening that, as a result, “health care reform may be dead by the end of August."

Thompson wrote, "Nebraskans don't need outside special interest groups telling them what to think."

Only a few problems with Nelson’s indignant, self-rightous and self-serving stand.

First, the “outside group” is Mike Snider, a small business owner in Ralston, Nebraska, who’s featured in the ad because health coverage for his employees and family rose an unconscionable 42% this year. Oh, and Nelson has taken more than $2.2-million in campaign contributions from the medical-insurance complex, the dictionary definition of an “outside special interest group.”

Somehow, in his statement Thompson overlooks the thick wads of cash stuffed in Nelson’s pocket by pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors. And why does it take so much money to run for re-election in Nebraska, where TV spots can be bought for about $100 each? Two million bucks would buy 20,000 commercials – or every commercial availability on every television station in the state for more than a year. And we’re not even counting contributions Nelson receives from other corporate and individual donors.

Clearly, the medical-insurance complex wants something more from Nelson than helping him buy advertising and opening re-election campaign offices.

Sadly, if Nelson were the only problem Blue Dog, this would be a tempest in a teapot. But, as Olbermann points out, the list includes Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus, who’s received bags of money from the same people as have a long list of other Senate and House Democrats trying to block the will of 72% of Americans.

Fortunately, my representatives – Keith Ellison in the House, and Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken on the Senate side – aren’t on Keith’s list. Unfortunately, theirs are only three votes among 535 and – more importantly – just 10 or so Blue Dogs are trying their best to wreck the nation’s first meaningful health care and insurance reform since Richard Nixon proposed the concept of HMOs.

UPDATE 5: "I Love Alaska So Much I Quit"

2009-07-28T13:31:00.007-04:00

I don’t know how most Alaskans reacted to Sarah Palin’s resignation but if I lived up there I’d breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Of course, my reaction might not be typical because I suspect I’m one of the “media” she begged to not bother the children of her successor. Fine. As long as he doesn’t drag them out like political stage props every day the way Sarah has done for the past year, I’ll join the entire press corps in leaving them alone. Children are always off-limits unless the politician shoves them front and center.

I’ll also continue to “not make stuff up.”

Not in my 40 years of being in journalism have I made anything up or even re-staged a photo: Not the “Alaskan’s Speak” article I wrote last year that drove the right winger batty, not any of the campaign stories I produced where people inside the McCain campaign talked about how she was driving everyone batty, not about what people inside the intelligence community told me about how much Bush knew about 9/11 in advance.

Hey, it wasn’t me who said “I told Congress ‘no, thanks’” about the bridge to nowhere only after gleefully grabbing the money until I was thrust onto a national stage and being caught with my hand grasping a check from Washington became politically untenable.

It took me a few days to write this because I’ve had trouble trying to figure out just what she said on Sunday. I reran the tape four or five times and what she said still didn’t make any sense. I even played the whole thing backwards, hoping to find some hidden message the way Beatles fans did from time to time.

Nope. No matter how many times I read and listened to Palin’s “I love Alaska so much I quit” speech, there was no there, there – as Dorothy Parker once said of Philadelphia.

Fortunately, I flipped on Conan last night and William Shatner enlightened me. Turns out Palin’s speech was meant to be read as poetry and it makes much more sense with Shatner’s interpretation:

And with that, Sarah exited stage right.

Next On Our Stage …

It’s too much to hope that Palin will go quietly into that good night.

But even if she does, the crazy right always has someone just as nutty waiting in the wings to take her place. This week it’s Ben Stein.

The one-time game show quiz master and Jimmy Kimmel straight man, bit player in Ferris Beuhler’s Day Off and New York Times business columnist scribbled a nasty piece about Pres. Obama in The American Spectator that is so riddled with fact errors – which increasingly seems like a habit with people who write for the Times – and bitter, bile churning hate that it makes me wonder who won Ben Stein’s loony pill.

His piece is so bad that Reuters blogger Felix Salmon writes it is “the kind of thing which should automatically disqualify Stein from writing for the New York Times.”

Among Stein’s salvos at Obama includes “his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.”

Whoops. Fact error, and a big one. The president was the magna cum laude editor of the Harvard Law Review. Even Liberty University’s law school’s law review requires some academic achievement, if it publishes one.

Then, Stein comes close to accusing Obama of not being a citizen but steps back from the brink, writing that he is just “not being a fan of this country (who is) way, way too cozy with the terrorist leaders in the Middle East (that goes) way beyond naïveté, all the way into active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future.”

This is pure political and hatred based on no substantiation whatsoever. Sort of like the “birthers.” Which Middle East terrorist leaders is Obama cozying up to these days? Stein doesn’t say or even speculate. Nor does he hint at which American interest – or that “of our allies and our future” – the president is naively shredding.

Hits Keep Coming

Sarah, Ben, the birthers, C Street, Sgt. Crowley, the burly Florida cop who tasered a frail 80-something woman because she wouldn’t sign a parking ticket. The hits just keep on coming from the lunatic right that now passes as the Republican Party.

Sadly for the country, compadres of this group run amok in the nation, blocking health care reform, trying to stop card check, fighting financial industry regulation and taking stimulus money for their state in one hand while slamming it with the other. The GOP once was the Grand Old Party; now, sadly, the initials stand for Goofy Old Poops.

– h/t to Barbara Bedway

Obama Needs A Shot Of LBJ

2009-07-27T11:01:00.002-04:00

Pres. Lyndon Johnson had many tragic flaws but one thing he knew how to do is get his legislation passed. Members of Congress called it getting "the Johnson treatment" which ranged from flattery, promises of federal money for a pet project back in the district or even rides on Air Force One to bullying and outright threats of White House retribution.

As a result, before Vietnam consumed and then destroyed his presidency, LBJ got a reluctant Congress – controlled almost entirely by conservative, often openly racist, Southern Democrats – to enact Medicare, massive civil rights legislation, expansive voting rights measures, huge anti-poverty programmes, generous education funding, financial sector regulation and a raft of other Great Society measures that made life better for tens of millions of Americans of all ages, races and income brackets.

In fact and in no small measure, Barack Obama was able to be elected because of laws LBJ got enacted.

Pres. Obama is said to have read a lot of books about Abraham Lincoln during the campaign and transition; too bad he didn’t read more Doris Kearns Goodwin books about Lyndon Johnson. Right now, he needs a strong shot of LBJ if he hopes to get Congress to enact a health care plan that even faintly resembles "reform" – let alone anything that makes major changes to fix America’s broken, dysfunctional system of doling out medicine.

Barter, Bargain, Beat

Recently, Obama summoned the Blue Dogs – who are just Republicans in blue jackets – to The White House where he tried reasoning with them like an adult. Fine. A good place to start. But as soon as he realised he was getting nowhere and the "ConservaDems" were standing firm, it was time to stop reasoning and start banging heads.

As distasteful as he may find doing so, Obama and his Congressional liaison staff must get in the faces of the recalcitrant members of his own party and barter, bargain or beat them into submission.

It’s all well and good if the president wants to stay above the fray in his era of post-partisan politics. But why isn’t Rahm Emanuel body slamming Blue Dogs against the wall like LBJ and say bluntly to them, "There’s isn’t a Senator on the Hill who doesn’t want something. What do you want? We can drop our opposition to the defense budget rider you’re pushing. Money? We'll give your state billions. Access? How about a weekend at Camp David for you and the family? What about stepping off Air Force One with the president back home?

"But we gotta have your vote. If you don't commit right now to voting with the president on what he wants, the way he wants it, don't ask for any favors while the Obama’s live in this house. Remember, if he goes down, you go down, too."

Hardball

Big Pharma, medical device manufacturers, physicians and surgeons, the insurance industry and everyone else with a vested interested in killing real health care reform are spending more than one million dollars every day lobbying to try overruling what some 70% of Americans say they want and need: Serious cost control, eliminating coverage denial, killing hidden policy provisions that deny care people thought they were buying, and trimming excessive health industry profits.

Socialized medicine? Nonsense. These same people said the same thing about Medicare back in the 60s.

For right-wingers, calling reform or a public option government-controlled socialized medicine may play well with the base but what’s being proposed isn’t anything close. Believe me: I live in a country with national health and it works just fine. Sure, anyone can find somebody in Canada – or Britain or Germany or France – with a horror story to put in a commercial. But while people grumble, a new study by a conservative think tank found that 69% of Canadians are very happy with the medical care they receive and the system that provides it.

It is way past time for The White House to start playing hardball politics with Congress, and I don’t mean the annoying Chris Mathews version. I mean the sort of hardball politics that will provide universal access to affordable health care – which is what Obama promised during the campaign.

Ten Totally Weird Days On The Far Right

2009-07-21T08:22:00.010-04:00

I disappear for a couple weeks and look what I find upon returning: Ten days that were weird even for increasingly bizarre far right politicians, hangers-on and just plain wacko’s. Everywhere I looked, another freak was freaking out.

Senate Republicans confirmed they have an odd, almost sexual, obsession with “wise Latina women” that borders on a fetish. During her confirmation hearings, Jeff Sessions used the phrase repeatedly as he leered at Sonia Sotomayor so peculiarly that I suspected he was picturing her in stockings, a bustier and maybe Sarah Palin pumps. Tom Coburn’s tasteless – and bad – imitation of Ricky Ricardo during the hearing came off sounding like a third rate racist comic performing at a roadside strip club in the rural south.

In a related move, Pat Buchanan was shouting himself hoarse claiming only white men can jump. Because they built the continent by importing black slaves, killing red Indians and abusing Chinese workers, Buchanan insists that aggrieved yet clearly superior white males deserve special breaks when it comes to Supreme Court nominations. Fortunately, Rachel Maddow – who had him on her show – fact checked the old coot.

In the meantime, Palin herself was opposing cap-and-trade in an error-filled Washington Post Op-Ed piece, forgetting she gave it her full-throated support during the campaign, another sign that her debilitating Bridge To Nowhere syndrome is getting worse.

It Keeps Going

The tangled romantic webs of John Ensign and Mark Sanford became even more tangled, taking on a Keystone Cop feel except Les Affaire d’ Coeur of the two family value philanderers were overshadowed by the discovery of their common association with a scary, fringe religious cult called The Family, perhaps named in tribute to Don Corleone – and what appears to be questionable hush money payments made by Ensign’s parents to his mistress, her hubby and two of their three kids, with some more allegedly coming out of a Republican campaign fund.

And Sanford’s verbal diarrhoea continued, claiming his affair with the Argentine firecracker will make his marriage stronger. Note to married men caught cheating by their spouse: Don’t ever say this in real life; it will land you in a hospital with multiple injuries.

To cap things off, on Monday we learned that Irving Moskowitz, an ultra-conservative octogenarian, funnels profits from a bingo hall he owns in a largely Hispanic, desperately poor Los Angeles district with the improbable name of Hawaiian Gardens to fund illegal Israeli West Bank settlements on land stolen from Palestinians, possibly both a tax dodge and a felony because the money flows through Moskowitz’s “charitable trust.”

The only thing to make the past fortnight any stranger would be if Britney Spears converted to Judaism. Oh, wait: She did.

Ordinary Wacko’s

Common, everyday wing nuts managed to get in on the fun, too.

I flipped on my television to see a woman at a county GOP meeting holding up her birth certificate in a plastic bag like crime scene evidence to support her contention that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen. Demanding “I want my country back,” the goofy birther was silenced only when the chair agreed to lead the meeting in the Pledge of Allegiance as people around her looked at each other and smirked in disbelief. Apparently, there are still a few Republicans rooted in reality.

Meanwhile, a Google Alert popped up in my e-mail.

In it, I discovered that a website called Conservatives4Palin is still trashing me for news articles I investigated and published 10 months ago. Somehow, a writer boosting Palin’s Op-Ed cap-and-trade piece managed to tie it to reporting I did in September, calling me a few unflattering names in the process.

Forgetting that rabid dogs roaming Palinistaville have no time for simple facts when they get in the way, innocently I wrote a reply comment pointing out the discrepancy between what Palin wrote in the Post and what she said as McCain’s running mate along with some of the fact errors. I also explained – again – how I did my reporting for the earlier pieces on Palin.

Big mistake.

In a succession of posts, I was called a liar – in all caps, naturally – anti-American, a Communist, a Fascist, a liar again, a “one worlder” whatever that means, a "9/11 truther" and a supporter of the UN.

Not surprisingly, no one who wrote in reply to my comment disputed any of my facts. Equally not surprising was that by the next morning the site administrator removed my comments and, I discovered to my delight, I am banned forever from commenting at the site. Some time ago, RedState.com also banned me and I wear the banning like war medals.

This truly must be a glorious time to be a conservative in America!

UPDATE 4: Goofy Sarah Blames Reporters So She Invites Them To A Fishkill

2009-07-08T11:09:00.006-04:00

When will this nonsense end?

Barely four days ago, Sarah Palin blamed the news media and citizens demanding accountability for her quitting as governor in that weird “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore” resignation speech she gave on the banks of Lake Louise. But to give journalists – if not concerned voters – one more kick at her can, Tuesday she invited the three major networks, CNN, Fox, Time and a handful of other reporters to her family’s private fishing beach to, well, actually I’m not sure why they were invited.

Nor do I understand why the media scrum climbed hurriedly into rented cars, vans or bush planes to head into the woods to talk with her. Did any of them really expect Palin would suddenly turn all serious and thoughtful and coherent, giving answers that both made sense and were introspective? She hasn’t made sense once since her vice presidential nomination last fall so what made reporters, and their editors or producers, think things would be different yesterday?

Apparently, reporters on the Alaska Watch did because one after another supposedly Serious National Journalist stood there as Palin, garbed bizarrely in fishing waders that Rachel Maddow gleefully satirized last night, repeated her non-sensical utterances. At one point, she even waved her arms and whined, “You’re not listening to me!” at NBC’s Andrea Mitchell who asked why she thought quitters are winners a second time when Palin didn’t answer Mitchell’s original question.

Like any narcissist, it is clear Palin enjoys pressing on a bruise – exposing herself to reporter’s questions – because it feels so good when she stops.

Anyone less notorious than Palin would have been shunted off to a psychiatrist by now for serious treatment aided by serious medication. This woman who but for the grace of the American electorate, might be living at the Naval Observatory as Vice President of The United States right now instead of where she belongs, in a tasteful pale blue suite at the Menninger Clinic is acting in a totally strange way.

Families of the mentally ill are cautioned not to enable crazy behaviour. The mainstream news media might thin about following the same advice and stop enabling Palin's craziness. When Billy Carter admitted being an alcoholic, Johnny Carson told Tonight Show viewers he would no longer make jokes about the man “because he has a serious problem and I don’t make jokes about people who are ill.”

UPDATE 3: Goofy Sarah’s Goofy Money Problems

2009-07-06T11:25:00.006-04:00

It’s sort of fitting that the annual running of the bulls begins today in Pamplona where the bull’s shit will be as deep as it is these days in Wasilla, Alaska.

Yet another possible reason for Gov. Palin’s resignation crops up in this morning’s New York Times which reports that she resigned because of the rising cost of her mounting personal legal bills incurred in dealing with the 15 ethics violations filed against Palin – with new charges allegedly on the way. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell told a Fox Sunday news interview show that she owes her lawyers around $500,000.

No word so far on whether Palin’s lawyer served Parnell, the Times or Fox News with a copy of its “stop speculating or we’ll sue” threat it issued Saturday.

Maybe if she had done a better job paying attention to the rules of the game in Alaska that she chose to play – and there don’t seem to be too many rules up there to begin with – she wouldn’t be a half-million dollars in debt to her legal eagles and other birds of prey.

Naturally, Palin claims an entirely different reason – her third or fourth or 10th since announcing her resignation. On her Facebook page, Palin is signalling she wants a larger, national role in politics, citing what she now insists is a “higher calling” to push for conservative causes.

Oy.

Didn’t George Bush claim that God told him to invade Iraq? Well, I suppose since Palin is free of witches, she has plenty of time on her hands to listen to God whispering in her ear since running Alaska – the job she was elected to do – is so boring she hardly ever shows up in Juneau.

As if all of this isn’t enough to give you dry heaves, also in this morning’s Times, Ross Douthat claims on the Op-Ed page in an article titled "Palin And Her Enemies," that if only Palin had waited to enter the national stage and not leap at John McCain’s offer to be his running mate, “There would still be plenty of time to ease into the national spotlight, to bone up on the issues, and to craft a persona more appealing than the Mrs. Spiro Agnew role the McCain campaign assigned to her.”

Not only does Douthat mirror Palin’s credo that her fall from heaven is always someone else’s fault, he blames it all on the McCain campaign that picked her for the sole purpose, apparently, of ruining her. And then he goes on to claim that she is “talented enough” to have a national political future.

Excuse me?

Uhm, Ross, this is the woman who wouldn’t read briefing books, refused to prepare for network interviews, didn’t want to rehearse for her debate with Joe Biden, claimed Barack Obama palled around with terrorists and didn’t silence yahoo’s in the crowd who shouted back “Kill him!”

In only about 30 months of being governor of a very small state, she’s faced more ethics violation charges than a Chicago ward heeler, tried to refuse stimulus money for a state with more problems than it has oil until the Republican legislature forced her to do so, charged the state for living in her own home and tried charging Alaskan taxpayers for her children’s travel costs, accepted speaking invitations before declining them before saying she didn’t mean it and would speak after all, and saw her popularity plummet as voters in the 49th state came to see what a wacko they’d elected.

Exactly where does her talent lay, Ross, other than being a foil for Tina Fey?

Still, if a money crunch is the final, real, last chance to get off, reason for walking away and she wants to answer some “higher calling,” I assume it means Palin will continue to haunt us and provide Jon Stewart with plenty of lead stories for years to come.

UPDATE 2: Goofy Sarah Stomps Her Feet And Holds Her Breath

2009-07-05T13:54:00.001-04:00

Sarah Palin trotted out her lawyer late Saturday to refute charges appearing in various news media that she is allegedly under investigation for wrongdoing during her stint as Wasilla’s mayor.

Thomas van Flein of Anchorage law firm Clapp, Peterson, Van Flein, Tiemessen, Thorsness, LLC issued a statement warning, “To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as ‘fact’ that Governor Palin resigned because she is ‘under federal investigation’ for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation.”

The entire press release is available as a PDF file.

While an FBI spokesman in the Anchorage office denied that the agency was investigating her, it is investigating the construction firm that build the Wasilla Sports Complex and which, media reports alleged here and here, contributed cash to her political campaigns and, it’s alleged, material and labor to her under-construction home. More to the point, the criminal division of the Justice Dept. has its own investigators separate from the FBI, and it was the DoJ that refused to confirm or deny that Palin is under investigation.

So it is entirely possible the FBI is telling the truth – that it does not have her in its sights – but Justice Dept. investigators or the IRS might be conducting a probe. No one at DoJ or Treasury was available for comment Sunday, in the middle of a long holiday weekend.

Typical Palin

Huffington Post’s AKMuckraker writes this morning that Palin’s lawyer-led response is her typical modus operandi.

Despite the fact that she specifically refers twice to the report as a "rumor," Van Flein says she portrayed the story as fact. The only fact is that there are rumors. I know because I've been hearing them since last October. They even have a name – “Housegate." If you Google "Palin Housegate," you get 8,600 references, beginning with an article that appeared in the Village Voice.

“I’m gonna sue your ass off!” is a common cry when someone thinks they can silence the news media – mainstream, alternative or internet.

But even if the rumors are totally unfounded, the fact is it’s nearly impossible for the media to defame a public figure the way the law is written: Palin would have to prove intent, something difficult to do in the best of circumstances, and reporting rumors about a governor didn’t constitute defamation the last time my lawyer’s checked.

Some of the best advice anyone ever gave me was “sleep on it, decide in the morning.” In other words, don’t do anything in a fit of picque.

Despite constant rumors about all kinds of things that fly around her like geese, it seems as if Sarah went postal after Moore’s blog was posted instead of sleeping on it. Rather than giving herself time to cool down, she hired a lawyer and started threatening people with defamation suits she can’t win and may end up having to pay the defendant’s costs to boot if legal papers ever get filed.

Meanwhile …

One of Palin’s many shortcomings during the presidential campaign was that she was seen as quick to shoot from the hip, sometimes making irrational statements contradicting what the head of her ticket and campaign headquarters were saying or doing.

This latest kerfluffle does nothing to make Palin seem any less irratic or goofy. It was as if she learned nothing between the Republican Convention and election night.

True, Palin may be endearing herself even more to her base of supporters – if many of them can read, let alone use the internet or Google. But for much of the GOP mainstream, if there is such a thing any longer, and independents who refused to vote for McCain-Palin in November, this latest episode is just one more reason to gag whenever they hear her name.

In addition to learning few lessons about national politics last fall, neither, apparently did she learn a real world life lesson: Never pick a fight with anyone who buys newsprint by the ton.

I’m sorry, Sarah, but you’ll never have the last word on this.

UPDATE: Is Goofy Sarah About To Be Indicted?

2009-07-04T13:00:00.009-04:00

It seems that about-to-be former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is in serious trouble, which may explain her bizarre, rambling resignation yesterday.

Brad's Blog is quoting multiple sources saying that the US Dept. of Justice is about to indict her on embezzlement, charges dating back to her days as Wasilla mayor. Apparently, when she had the municipal sports complex built, the contractor - who also contributed serious money to her mayoral and gubernatorial races - allegedly looted the construction site to slip windows, wood and workers to the Palin's for their new house on the lake, all gratis.

As I reported on Friday afternoon, senior people from the McCain presidential campaign who worked with Palin were totally flummoxed by her sudden resignation. One said to me almost as soon as the news broke, “She was a disaster campaigning for vice president and she isn’t any less of a nightmare back home in Alaska.”

My own additional reporting late Friday afternoon and Saturday morning backs up the Brad Blog assertion based on his fine, early reporting. Before the right wing goes bonkers, the probe was launched when Bush was president and in control of the Justice Dept. Now, however, DoJ sources declined to confirm or deny the report to me, a statement usually made when there is an ongoing investigation. If there were no basis to the rumours, the DoJ quickly denies any such possibility.

As Paul Krugman writes this morning at his blog, those "whom the gods would destroy, they first make Republican governors."

Breaking News: Goofy Sarah’s Goofy Resignation

2009-07-03T16:43:00.000-04:00

“People who know me know that besides faith and family, nothing's more important to me than our beloved Alaska. Serving her people is the greatest honor I could imagine.”

In fact, Palin loves Alaska and the honor of serving its people so much that she told relieved Alaskan Republicans Friday afternoon that she is resigning, effective in a couple of weeks. Palin told a news conference at her Wasilla home that, having decided not to run for re-election, she wants to get out of the way.

“Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional 'Lame Duck' status in this particular climate would just be another dose of 'politics as usual,' something I campaigned against and will always oppose. It is my duty to always protect our great state,” Palin tells reporters.

Then, continuing without pausing for a breath. she adds, “With that in mind, my family and I determined that it is best to make a difference this summer, and I am willing to change things, so that this administration, with its positive agenda, its accomplishments, and its successful road to an incredible future, can continue without interruption and with great administrative and legislative success."

Huh? Lots of elected local, state and federal officials decide not to run for re-election but they stick around to finish their term. There hadn’t been a whisper of her leaving office before the election.

“Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me at all,” a former senior member of the McCain presidential campaign tells me almost as soon as the news breaks. “She was a disaster campaigning for vice president and she isn’t any less of a nightmare back home in Alaska.”

Massive State Problems

As governor, Palin is coping with massive state problems that are taking the shine off her political star. In fact, she was likely to face a primary challenge if she decided to run for another terms as governor.

A principal problem is lower oil prices and a recession-induced drop in demand for Alaska crude. Since the state collects hefty royalties on oil pumped from the ground, revenue has dropped precipitously. Threatened is not just the state budget but the annual “dividend” Juneau pays to each resident every year.

Then there are Palin’s problems with her own party which essentially forced her into accepting federal stimulus money. The state’s conservative voters may not like the idea of Washington spending a lot of taxpayer cash, but they want their share as long as it is being handed out.

Moreover, Palin faces new charges that she forced out a state official on tenuous grounds. Yesterday, Beverly Wooley, who spent more than 20 years in public health in Alaska, ended her stint as state public health director on Wednesday.

She's the second top health official to leave within days. The state's chief medical officer, Jay Butler, left two weeks after declining to take on Wooley's job along with his own. He now is in Atlanta, overseeing a Center for Disease Control task force on a vaccine to protect against the H1N1 flu virus.

During the presidential campaign, Palin was criticized sharply by the legislature for firing the head of the state police for refusing to fire an ex-in law.

Why Now?

The question remains why the sudden departure?

After all, being governor gave her a platform for media attention whether to pick a bizarre squabble with David Letterman or demonstrate her bewildering ignorance of domestic policies or foreign affairs.

No doubt the reason has little if anything to do with the reasons she’s giving today. Palin’s lack of familiarity with the truth came out again in an e-mail exchange released this week with Steve Schmidt during the campaign. Is another scandal brewing in the life of right wing America’s favorite trailer trash queen or is she really as erratic as we always suspected?

“Beats me,” my Republican source exclaims. “I’m as bewildered as you. I just hope she goes away and returns to the obscurity she so richly deserves.”

Yankee Doodle Dandiness: Missing Home On July 4

2009-07-03T12:30:00.008-04:00

July 1 was Canada Day so, on Wednesday, The New York Times asked 11 Canadians living in the States what they missed most about their native land. Turnabout is fair play and I started thinking about what I miss about home, having lived in Toronto since 1991. Here are a few things that come to mind as I quietly mark the July 4th holiday.

Insane Politicians – In the last month alone, there have been more political loonies making insane comments in the US media that there’ve been in the 18-plus years I’ve lived up here: Sanford, Vitter, Ensign, Palin, Gingrich, Lieberman, Boehner, Joe the Non-Plumber, Michelle Bachman. And those are just so-called national figures. Don’t overlook Missouri legislator Cynthia Davis, chair of the state’s permanent committee on children, who insists going hungry is good for kids whose parents are too poor to feed them.

Compare Canada. Back in the late 1990s, Canada had an angry old coot named Preston Manning as Parliamentary leader of the far-right wing Reform Party. Finally, even his supporters thought the guy with a 1950s-style flat top the colour of a steel brush and high, squeaky voice was so goofy, they not only replaced Manning as leader but changed the party name – twice – to shake off any connection with him and his racist, Neanderthal ideas.

Political Scandals – Whether it’s sex, drugs, rock n’ roll or influence peddling, the US stands first among Western nations for unleashing high-voltage political scandals; Canada barely measures a ripple on the Richter Scale.

The closest thing to a genuine scandal came when former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was accused briefly of accepting a bribe to steer Air Canada towards buying some Airbus planes. Not only did it turn out to not be true but the amount of money involved was something like $250,000. In Canadian dollars, which is like Monopoly money. Duke Cunningham’s price for making one phone call was higher than that and even the remodelling job on Ted Stevens deck probably cost more.

Good Bagels – Other than one or two Montréal bakeries and a place on Eglington Ave. in Toronto everyone calls The Dirty Bakery, there is not a Canadian alive who knows how to make a decent bagel. Up here, eating a bagel is mostly like biting into semi-chewy Wonder Bread with about as much taste. Why can Americans bake good bagels which, admittedly, is an art and Canadians think tossing in some blueberries or using whole grain flour is enough to pass off a doughy lump as a bagel.

Doughnuts – Speaking of inedible food, for a nation that has more doughnut shops per capita than maybe any other country, Canada does a lousy job of making doughnuts. Maybe it’s because relatively few Germans bakers settled here but I haven’t eaten a decent doughnut since I arrived 1991. The same goes for Danish: You’d think that in a country filled with all kinds of bears, someone would know how to make a Bear Claw.

Hamburgers – I’m not talking about fast food pretenders but honest-to-God real hamburgers. I have been in every major city in Canada and quite a few minor ones, as well, and the only place in the entire country that makes an edible burger is a lunchroom in Toronto’s financial core called The Senator.

Good Newspapers – Despite being a newspaper reading nation – Toronto alone still has four dailies plus two freebies – the major papers around the country are pathetic. I’m an avid reader of papers but miss what still pass for newspapers in the US.

The Globe and Mail pretends to be An Important National Daily but isn’t. The National Post only prints Conservative Party talking points. The Toronto Sun may have the best sports section in the country and a photo of a bikini-clad Sunshine Girl every day but if a story doesn’t involve cars crashing, fires burning, pets being mistreated or cute kids selling lemonade in a park, the Sun doesn’t consider it news.

The Toronto Star has the largest paid circulation but it’s only good if you want to find an obscure local angle to a news event thousands of miles away. For example, the Star’s likely first paragraph to an African plane crash might be “No Toronto residents were on board a plane that made a fiery crash landing in Mbgobuto in a remote section of The Congo yesterday, killing all six passengers and a crew of two.”

Complaining – Americans are notorious for whining, complaining and suing over everything. Some people consider a day without complaining is like a day without sunshine, and I sometimes I miss their orneriness. Maybe not in-your-face, New York-style bitching but I miss hearing people speaking out, and out loud.

Up here, people are no less happy with the nonsense the world throws at them but they remain stoically silent. If Ottawa ordered everyone to wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes, no one would like it but no one would complain.

Well, except for me, I suppose. I just used 800 words to complain about things I miss about America.

An Open Letter to President Obama and Congress – Help Bring Paula Home

2009-07-02T07:59:00.002-04:00

Guest post by Denis Campbell, editor of UKProgressive.

The healthcare debate rages across Capitol Hill with lobbyists fighting against a ‘single payer’ option as if it were the moral equivalent of the anti-Christ. Before you blindly accept any bill, please examine the very real - and ironic - face this debate has taken on for me.

Paula Persichini-Petitti is a woman to whom I once joked, “You would be what would happen if Mother Theresa, Joan Jett and a drug-free Janis Joplin merged.” Paula is one tough, rock and roll loving, hard living, Boston-area born and bred “broahd” with a “haht” (heart) of pure gold. Listening to her thick Boston accent you would start with a first impression that would be one of the absolute biggest mistakes you could ever make.

Paula was born a rebel. She graduated from the nursing program at Blue Hills Regional Institute and became a radiology specialist at a time where technology was evolving and most said she could not do it because she was too young. If you have a death wish or desire physical harm, merely suggest to Paula that she ‘cannot’ do something.

Ironically, she now lays with tubes coming out of her body, a respirator helping her breathe and in a coma in a Rapid City, South Dakota hospital. She has spent nearly every summer of the last several years, working with Russell and Pearl Means helping Native Americans of the Lakota Sioux Nation in Pine Ridge Reservation. There she counsels and teaches indigenous families about the twin health threats of alcohol abuse and diabetes in one of the USA’s poorest communities.

Several years ago Paula visited the island of Jamaica and was involved in an automobile accident. She’d been an emergency room nurse and when she saw the dreadful conditions people in that rural hospital near the Black River lived under, she returned home to Massachusetts and started BlackRiverProject.org. Most appealed to her saying, “that’s just the way it is Paula, nothing can be done about it.”

Step back please, human freight train coming through.

Her leadership has seen her beg, cajole, plead and threaten just about every doctor, medical school, pharmaceutical and medical supplier in Massachusetts and across the globe to help her bring free medical supplies, used machinery, doctors and nurses to some of the most ravaged 3rd world hell-holes on the face of the planet.

Paula and I grew up two blocks from each other in the southern Massachusetts town of Avon. I went to school with her big brother Ricky and, as usual, everyone went their separate ways after graduation. My friend Terri said, “You’re a journalist, are you aware of Paula’s project?” That began a series of visits, phone calls, Facebook and Twitter exchanges to develop, research and tell this one woman’s story.

And what a story, everything from threatening Cuban prison guards suspicious of why she was there providing medical help by saying she was “Raul Castro’s mistress and there would be hell to pay if he found out she was being held there” - it worked, she was set free - to being dragged from her hotel room at night, convinced she would be shot and flying in Soviet era helicopters across Laos and Cambodia to meet the ruling generals to demand they provide mosquito netting to protect their citizens against malaria. Think The Killing Fields.

This woman’s life is bigger than any Hollywood screenplay. Yet she shrugs it all off with a laugh that would filled any room. Most of us live fractions of a life. Thoreau, another Massachusetts native said, “I wanted to live deliberately, deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Paula lives in a way that most dream of doing.

She was driving in a car that was rear-ended at speed by a pickup travelling at 60 mph. The impact severely jarred her brain stem causing damage to the thalamus, the part of the brain which is the centre for speech, body temp., sight, hearing and smell. While she can today squeeze the ICU doctor’s hand on command, the hope is her brain will form connections around the damage and more or less repair itself. The good people in Rapid City have taken her as far as she can go there and she needs now to be med-flighted to Massachusetts General Hospital where she will be under the care of a top neurosurgeon.

Paula has health insurance but – you know where this is going before I even type it – it does not cover life-flights. Speaking to the Life-flight despatch office in Rapid City, South Dakota, the flight is 1,600 air miles and will cost $30,000, and that’s just for the flight. Then there is tended ambulance service to and from the airplane at both ends which adds even more not to mention the longer term care she will require to heal.

Buddy Persichini, 78, is Paula’s very proud Dad. He has numerous health issues of his own and Paula has been his rock since her Mom died when she was in high school. Buddy is resigned to taking out a second mortgage on his paid off house to get her home. Were the same to happen to me under the right wing’s very publicly maligned UK ‘socialised’ NHS medical programme plus my out-of-pocket add-on, I’d already be ‘home’ in the UK in a local hospital with family by my side.

And there, Mr. President and Congress lays the rub. Why should a 78-year old man, who clearly loves his daughter, be forced to bury his fierce New England pride and go deep into debt to bring her home? Why too should Paula now risk losing her home to pay for long-term care when she returns?

This is what needs fixing in the health care system. Not providing the same profit margins for those who can most efficiently lobby but inefficiently leave a broken system essentially intact with some window dressing tweaking around the edges and then everyone calling that “ground breaking change.” For Paula and many like her, I urge you to bring in a public option to bring true competition and transparency into this opaque nightmare of a scenario.

Mr. President, you were quoted two days ago in the New York Times as saying:

“What we’ve been doing over the last six months is getting people back into fighting trim. This is a town where there was just a belief that nothing could get done… I’ll use just the workout metaphor, and that is… when you start training again and you’re pushing your body a little bit harder, sometimes it hurts. But if you keep on at it, after a while your body adjusts. And I think that’s what’s happening to politics in Washington.”

Sir, it’s time to end the training and start the marathon. It’s time Congress to put some real political capital and action behind those words on everything from this issue to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. You came into office promising change we could believe in and this is important not just to the nation, but to every one of us who sees a true Mother Theresa in need. Please consider it for all the irony-filled Paula’s out there, not just the ones who tell the best story at your town hall meeting and help bring her home without bankrupting her or her Dad in the process.

My own deep regret is that during my most recent visit to the USA in May, I cancelled our scheduled meeting because of time considerations. I now have to live with that. I promised to come back and see her in the fall. Now I must pray she will be home, solvent, conscious and well enough to recognise me.

Please contribute to “The Fund for Paula Persichini-Pettiti” by following the tipjoy micro-finance/contribution link and sending money to the e-mail address: info@bringpaulahome.org, at the website BringPaulaHome.org or via Twitter @BringPaulaHome. The family and her friends are moving very quickly to establish all accounts to life-flight transport her home and provide for her long term care needs.

An Early Summer Life In The Dominion

2009-06-28T11:20:00.006-04:00

Between Confederation Day on Wednesday and the upcoming July 4 weekend in the States, it's a very quiet week in Toronto.

I suspect I'm the only resident left on my entire block right now - maybe in the entire city. The mad rush to pack up cars and toss kids in the back went on all day yesterday. The sound of tires squealing as people pulled out of their driveway was as if molten lava was oozing down the hill and if they didn't get out immediately the volcano would consume them.

But there’s one district in the great hairy metropolis that hasn’t been evacuated for the holiday week.

In the central core's gay village, 1-million-plus people are doing their best to catch all kinds of vile STDs and parasites as this is Pride weekend in Toronto, noted for its wide open, find it on every corner, sex-on-a-stick – oops, bad word choice – frivolity. Along with Caribbana at the end of July, Pride is the biggest tourist draw Toronto mounts - more bad phrasing, sorry - during the year. About half of the attendees come - another sorry word choice - from somewhere else and hotels as far away as Kingston and Hamilton are booked because hotels, motels, B&B’s, trailer parks and camp grounds everywhere in the metro area have been reserved for a year.

Actually, pre-event crowd estimates for Pride were closer to 1.5-million because the weekend coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York.

Given that city workers, including the good folks who collect garbage, are on strike coupled with the very hot, muggy weather we’ve had all week means that Toronto stinks and the detritus from Pride weekend won't help things.

But the week has been a boon for the city's humongous raccoon population as garbage is piled high in all of the commercial districts. The lakefront smells because the daily, algae and bacteria clearing, city motorboat run along the lakeshore isn't being done. Public transit is running because TTC workers are in a different union, but other than the cops, fire fighters, EMS and people who work in water and sewage treatment plants, there's not a city employee in sight. It also means no parking tickets are being written – a major city revenue source – because meter monitors work for Streets & Sanitation, not the police.

Meanwhile, the older I get the faster time moves.

It seems other-worldly that my sister, Janice, died 10 years ago next month. Her ashes are buried in my garden and, if it’s not raining, on July 30th I’ll put a candle in the ground at her final resting place, light it in the twilight, and sit on the patio recollecting totally out of sequence bits-and-bots of her, pictures frozen in my mind’s eye that may range from a day when I was five and she came home from the hospital; the ritualistic morning squabble over which radio station we listened to as we drove to U-High; her first wedding which was like living a Robert Altman film; Janice, who was maybe four at the time, kicking a neighbour in his groinular region because he kept pushing over her doll house; the last time I saw her healthy which was the weekend in 1999 she brought mother’s dog, Belle, to live with me after mom died.

Today also happens to be my father’s birthday so maybe I’m in a melancholy mood generally. Sorry for the prattle.

What’s With Cable’s “All Jack-O All The Time” News Coverage?

2009-06-26T11:19:00.004-04:00

Yesterday’s solemn, over-the-top, wall-to-wall, commercial free coverage of Michael Jackson's death left me wondering if Archduke Ferdinand had been shot a second time.

Yes, Jackson once was an entertainment and music genius but he hadn’t done anything in years, yes, and his parents doomed him in childhood to a miserable life. But Prince is a music and show biz genius, too, yet he keeps his private peccadilloes private. And, besides, many of us had parents who doomed us as kids to something or another awful in adulthood.

Somehow, though, we didn't end up with totally unhealthy and unnatural – possibly illegal – attachments to young boys that Jackson thought was just fine. Nor did we dangle our own newborn by the ankles over a hotel balcony, constantly sponge off of other people in recent years because we couldn't afford our lifestyle, show up one day for a trial wearing pajama bottoms, become addicted to prescription medicines and rely on thugs from the Nation of Islam for security.

We didn’t end up wack-o Jack-o.

As news helicopters kept circling the UCLA Medical Center where Jackson died, one anchor after another talked about the “crowd” gathered outside the hospital to pay tribute.

First of all, there were maybe 200 people at any one time, hardly a crowd. In Los Angeles, a city of 3.8-million, you can get 200 people who are silly enough to worship the famous to show up for a garage door opening if it somehow involves a celebrity.

Second, the fact that he was quite possibly a pedophile was conveniently overlooked in yesterday’s “All Jack-O All The Time” coverage: The jury found Jackson not guilty, which doesn’t always mean innocent. Just ask former Sen. Ted Stevens. In Jackson’s case, the DA didn’t prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Fine. In our system he wasn’t legally guilty and I accept the fact. But let’s not forget that, in the early-to-mid 1990s, it was widely reported that Jackson paid untold millions to another family over the same issue involving their young son and, in return, the parents withdrew charges they’d filed against him.

Infamous Fascination

I’m not the first to note that America has become a culture obsessed by a macabre fascination with the infamous.

In the past 10 days alone, along with Jackson’s death we’ve been treated ad nauseum to coverage of tearful admissions of infidelity by Sen. David Vitter and Gov. Mark Sanford – with interest in Sanford multiplied by his colorful disappearance for five days followed by his convoluted, sniveling story of finding true, meaningful love in Argentina, of all places. Add widespread coverage of Ryan O’Neil saying that Farah Fawcett finally agreed to marry him as she lay days away from death, the marital traumas of Jon and Kate, and probably something about another trailer trash relative in the goofy Palin family, and cable news had no time left yesterday to give much coverage to, oh, Pres. Obama’s morning announcement on the energy bill moving through the House or following up on his news conference compromise with himself about the absolute need for a public option in health care reform.

The problem is ubiquitous.

Even the normally sober Juan Cole’s blog Friday morning was devoted to why Jackson was popular in the Middle East. At least Paul Krugman asked if any readers remembered Wilbur Mills and his “Argentine firecracker” in explaining that he wasn’t going to comment on the Sanford debacle.

Absurd Realism

As absurd as is the Jackson coverage, I’m realistic enough to know that something like the sudden death of a notorious celebrity draws viewers. Even Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow recognized that fact. But they kept it in perspective, devoting the time the story deserved: A brief introduction, a quickly assembled bio, perhaps a clip of another celebrity saying how sad it all is, and that was that.

Still, I can’t help feel unsettled when Keith Olbermann is on air for hours, garbed Murrow-like in a vest and shirtsleeves as if telegraphing that Something Momentous Is Being Reported Here, talking gravely about what essentially is an Entertainment Tonight story.

It’s a shame when anyone dies prematurely. But it’s even more of a shame when the death is treated by the media as a major event, worthy of the kind of coverage given a state funeral or outbreak of war. When did we lose our perspective?

Yet Again, The Right Is Wrong – This Time About Cap-And-Trade Costs

2009-06-22T09:51:00.001-04:00

Don’t conservatives, ConservaDems, the Republican Party and the rest of the “climate change is a hoax” crowd ever get tired of being wrong?

For several years, business lobbyists along with GOP and other right wing mouthpieces in Congress and on the air have been yowling that the US cannot afford what they claim is the gargantuan cost of various proposals to control global warming. Claiming an end to the world as we know it if any legislation passes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they insist that the cost will bankrupt every man, woman and child of us.

Yet again, the right is wrong.

A new study released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office calculates the cost in 2020 of cap-and-trade at 18-cents a day per household.

That’s right: 18-cents. Per household. Math was never my strongest subject but I can use a calculator and, by my figuring, we’re talking about $1.26 per week. Most families spend more than this on ridiculously expensive Starbucks or Tim Horton’s or whatever coffee every day.

Put differently, for about $65.50 per year per US household, Douglas Elmendorf of the CBO wrote to Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) of the House Ways and Means Committee, we can create a system under HR 2454, known as The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, that is shown to make a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions almost as soon as it is enacted.

I’m sure that Camp, the ranking Republican on the committee, was expecting a rather different answer.

Somehow, I doubt the answer he received will shut him – or the other “let the iceberg’s melt” crowd – up at all. Facts never seem to creep into their yammering.

UPDATE: Americans Favor Public Health Care; GOP Keeps Trash Talking

2009-06-21T07:13:00.008-04:00

A new New York Times/CBS News poll published Sunday morning shows Americans overwhelmingly support a public option for health care. And contrary to the view of Republicans on taxes, most Americans are willing to pay higher taxes to pay for universal coverage.

A whopping 72% of all Americans say they favor a government-administered plan to cover everyone. This includes 87% of Democrats, 62% of Independents and 50% of Republicans in the survey. Moreover, 57% say they are willing to pay higher taxes so everyone can be covered.
_________________

The original post appeared on Thursday.

The World Should Be Cheering Nico Pitney

2009-06-20T13:26:00.005-04:00

More than MSNBC, BBC or CNN; more than The New York Times or The Independent; more than perhaps any other news outlet, the world should be cheering - and thanking - Nico Pitney.

For seven days, his live blogging at Huffingto Post of the Iranian election uprising has kept the world informed of what is happening inside Tehran and other cities. He’s become a link and a lifeline between heroic Iranians defying the authorities who find ways to send cell phone videos and Tweets with the latest raw footage and information.

Even better, like any good journalist, he works hard to verify information before posting it and, if he cannot, he says the information is unverified.

Moreover, Pitney is breaking news faster than the MSM can get it out. For example, on Saturday morning while Reuters was citing Iranian state media claims that the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, was hit by a suicide bomber, Pitney was blogging that the only people talking about the bombing was the state media. He’d received no confirmed reports from people in Tehran keeping him posted via Twitter. Hours after the alleged incident, Pitney was still unable to confirm the bombing but was carrying detailed information on which embassies were accepting people wounded by policy, the army, Revolutionary Guards and the Basiji militia.

On Saturday afternoon, he was passing along verifiable messages that presidential candidate Mousavi was on Jayhoon St., speaking to demonstrators.

As important, Pitney is showing the world what the streets are link, including this remarkable cell phone video of unarmed demonstrators squaring off against the heavily armed Basiji.

He posted another video that YouTube removed so Pitney uploaded it to the HuffPo server, showing a seriously wounded young woman who dies as the video is shot. Caution: The video is extremely graphic.

Pitney worked in relative obscurity until Rachel Maddow interviewed Pitney during the week. I tried reaching him today and was thanked effusively but told he’s too busy keeping up with the massive street fighting. It’s totally understandable; in fact, shortly afterward, he modified his g-mail address posting by asking people to not send him congratulatory notes because too many important messages from Iran were already clogging his account.

When the dust settles and journalism award time rolls around, let’s hope that his amazing work is recognised.

The Italian Job: Border Police Seize $134-Billion In US Gov’t Securities

2009-06-19T13:03:00.004-04:00

Although the story is being widely reported across Europe and Asia, it’s received scant media coverage in the US.

AsiaNews, along with other major media outlets outside the US are reporting that Italy’s financial police, the Guardia Italiana di Finanza, seized US government bonds worth US$134.5-billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso, located less than 50 miles from Milan on the Italian-Swiss border.

Other than a sceptical piece at Bloomberg News Wednesday, the seizure hasn’t been reported on in the US.

This is surprising because the haul includes 249 Federal Reserve bonds worth US$500-million each plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth one billion dollar each.

The question business reporters should be asking is whether the bonds are real, meaning a foreign government is trying to quietly dump US Fed securities? Or are they counterfeit, a scheme to destabilize the American economy and currency during a period of economic crisis? But, so far, US financial journalists are as inquisitive about the suitcase full of bonds as they were about, oh, AIG’s dodgy underwriting practices, the sub-prime market, toxic assets in banks and Bernie Madoff before the lid on each was blown sky high.

Pyongyang’s Game?

In the 1990s, North Korea was caught running a huge and highly sophisticated counterfeiting scheme, printing what the Secret Service described at the time of the bust as excellent quality US$100 bills printed on undetectable yet not quite genuine paper, distributing the money mostly in Macao but also around Asia.

The counterfeit ring was shut down as was at least one Asian bank found to be active participants in the scheme. But it shows that the North Koreans have the capability to print superb if fake bank notes that are almost undetectable. With the United Nations’ new sanctions choking off Pyongyang’s access to hard currency, it’s entirely possible that the North Korean government hatched another counterfeit scheme to generate cash.

“We’re working with the Italian financial police to determine whether the securities are genuine or are part of a counterfeiting operation,” is all a US Treasury spokesperson tells me today before declining further comment because the matter is under investigation.

Privately, a source in the intelligence community says that if the notes are fakes, it makes sense that they would originate in North Korea.

“Pyongyang is smart enough to not try shipping nuclear or other material it knows we’re all looking for coming out of the country,” the source tells me. “We know they can print fake money no one other than experts can spot so why not print fake bonds?”

The source estimates that $134.5-billion in counterfeit bonds would produce a fast US$500-million to $1-billion in hard currency for North Korea when sold “and maybe a little more if they’re willing to shop around and wait a bit.”

Calling George Smiley

The Bloomberg article’s lead correctly says the news sounds like a plot straight out of a John Le Carre novel.

A rogue state is hemmed in on all sides and even its best friend, in this case China, is staring it down. Nuclear technology, its one exportable cash commodity, is suddenly on everyone’s black list. There’s a leadership crisis in the capital and hard-liners in the military are demanding money to pay for extremely costly nuclear tests and missile launches. Moderate elements need hard currency to buy black market food and medicine for the nation’s starving population.

And then everyone remembers the printing press sitting over in the corner, unused for a while but fully functional. All that’s required is obtaining three or four of the real bonds, spring the country’s best engraver from a dank political prison cell, and run off a few hundred billion of the US bonds.

All that’s missing is Connie Sachs, Le Carre’s alcoholic research expert with the world’s deepest memory rummaging through old files, passing notes to the mad Hungarian, Toby Esterhase, and George Smiley up in his pepper pot room on the fifth floor of the Circus pulling the strings.

The trouble is that the Italian border seizure isn’t fiction.

If the bonds are the real deal, then which government is fire saleing its stash of US debt obligations? If they’re fakes, who is trying to flood the market with counterfeit American government obligations?

And why aren’t Americans being told about this?

Walter Cronkite Is “Gravely Ill”

2009-06-19T09:19:00.011-04:00

Former CBS News anchorman and broadcast news great Walter Cronkite is said to be gravely ill and nearing death.

Cronkite, once The Most Trusted Man In America according to a Gallup Poll at the time, is 92 and TVNewser reports that CBS began updating his bio last week. The network is said to be preparing a special on his life to be broadcast when he dies.

Cronkite, who anchored the CBS Evening News for 19 years until Dan Rather’s political manoeuvring inside the network’s news division forced him into retirement in 1981, brought America good news and bad, knitting the nation together during times of stress as well as happy times. He’s also the single most-important reason I decided to become a television news reporter when I was still in my early teens.

Uncle Walter, as he was affectionately called by friends and total strangers, always seemed to be there for us. When he told us about the Kennedy Assassination, he struggled to keep his composure because he knew if he lost his cool, the country would as well.

And, a few years later, it was Walter who again told America about another tragedy, the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Walter shared joyous times with us, as well, like when he became almost giddy at the moon landing.

Cronkite’s reporting from Viet Nam absolutely turned the tide of public opinion about the folly going on interminably in Southeast Asia. When he told America the truth about how badly the war in Viet Nam was going, and said Washington was lying about it, Pres. Lyndon Johnson turned to then-aide Bill Moyers to say, “If I’ve lost Cronkite on this, I’ve lost the nation.”

If Edward R. Murrow invented TV news reporting, then Walter Cronkite made it a force in America’s daily life. It was because he gave everyone who toiled in the fertile, green vineyards of broadcast reporting a compass, a direction, a role model to aspire to become. During the course of his nearly 20 year reign behind the anchor desk, television news – network and local – achieved its peak, not just of influence but, more importantly, of credibility.

He was a giant and, for countless reasons, his likes will never be seen again. Instead, we have nincompoops like Bill O’Reilly, Chris Mathews, Joe Scarborough and Sean Hannity bringing disgrace, disrepute and despair to a profession that Walter Cronkite made honourable.

And that’s the way it is.

h/t to Hoffmania

The GOP Keeps Trash Talking Health Care

2009-06-18T14:18:00.003-04:00

Like when it rolled out its laughable 18-page “budget” five months ago that forgot to include any numbers, yesterday John “Man Tan” Boehner, Eric “Ralph Wiggums” Cantor and a handful of other Congressional Republicans unveiled a four page health care “plan” Wednesday that not only had no numbers, it had no substance, no ideas – good or bad – and the closest it came to being a plan was calling it one on the cover.

Not wanting to lose the spotlight to their colleagues in the House, three Republican Senators – John Kyl, Mitch McConnell and Pat Roberts – were busy introducing the Preserving Access to Targeted, Individualized and Effective New Treatments and Services (PATIENTS) Act of 2009. Their bill would prohibit Medicare or Medicaid from using “comparative effectiveness research to deny coverage.”

In layman’s language, this means Medicare would be compelled to pay for useless treatments. This comes from the same claque that prevented Medicare from negotiating drug prices when Republicans controlled Congress and the drug benefit was being introduced.

The trio actually launched this idiotic piece of legislation with a straight face, not noticing it is the silliest thing to come along since Nancy Reagan’s astrologer told Ronnie when to make policy speeches. As Paul Krugman points out Thursday morning, there are four insane components to the Republican’s latest piece of garbage:

1. Republicans who rail against wasteful government spending are taking action to prevent the government from … reining in wasteful spending.
2. Politicians who warn that the burden of entitlements is killing the federal budget are stepping in to block the single most painless route to reducing the growth of entitlements.
3. They’re doing it in the name of avoiding “rationing of health care” but they’re specifically addressing taxpayer-funded care. If you want to go out and buy a medically useless treatment, Medicare won’t stop you.
4. These same politicians are opposed to expanding coverage because it’s evil for government to “ration care” by only paying for things that work; it is, however, virtuous to ration care by refusing to pay for any care at all.

“You’re assuming people watching CNN are thinking,” a staff member to a Republican Senator tells me this morning. “We’re simply trying to make the point that government-sponsored health care is a terrible idea.”

Which Bureaucrat?

Trash talk was heard all over Capitol Hill Thursday and Friday.

Wednesday’s GOP talking point was warning about “inserting bureaucrats between you and your doctor,” and it was repeated at least a half-dozen times by interchangeable Republican faces popping up on cable news and C-SPAN.

Uhm, shouldn’t Republicans watch something besides Fox News occasionally? It is insurance company “bureaucrats” who keep inserting themselves between patients and doctors, denying coverage or treatment for people who are ill. Earlier this week Keith Olbermann treated us to the latest outrage: AIG, US Airways liability insurer, is telling a survivor of the airline’s Hudson River crash that she and her three year old daughter would not be covered for psychological counselling to deal with the on-going trauma of watching themselves almost die.

Yes, it’s that AIG. The one we own. One of us should tell AIG that even the Pentagon finally is treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

As for bureaucrats and medicine, I’ve had three grandparents and two parents covered by Medicare between the time they turned 65 and when they died – some in their late 80s and early 90s. Combined, they enjoyed 130+ years of Medicare and not once were any of them ever told by a “bureaucrat” they wouldn’t be covered for treating one ailment or another. They never waited to see a doctor nor did a “bureaucrat” dictate to their physicians which treatment to use or what medication to prescribe.

Oh, and by the way, dear Republicans: Not even the strongest proponents of a universal, single payer health care reform package is suggesting that doctors, nurses and other health professionals will work for the government. So why are you comparing them to postal workers and the Department of Motor Vehicles the way you did Thursday? Are you crazy, stupid or just plain liars trying to scare Harry and Louise into opposing health care reform one more time?

“OK, so likening a public plan to the DMV is an exaggeration. So what? The point is to stop this thing cold,” the Republican staffer admits reluctantly. “No one likes bureaucrats and everyone hates the Post Office and DMV. It’s a good ‘word picture’ that people who watch cable news can understand.”

So the answer to my question is: The GOP is happy lying to scare people while they try scoring a false point.

Paying Billions Already

What the viewers disparaged by the GOP don’t understand is they’re already paying for universal coverage, of sorts. An article published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine reports that we’re already spending $43-billion annually treating the 50-million uninsured Americans.

But care is an uneven hodgepodge of federal, state and local programmes, and much of the money is spent poorly or in the wrong place.

The report, co-authored by Linda Blumberg and John Holahan says, “Care provided in this way varies considerably by locale and does not amount to continuous, comprehensive care for the uninsured, nor do all the uninsured have access to such publicly subsidized services.

“Once everyone has health insurance coverage, either public or private, these funds can be redirected to help finance a new system that includes income-related subsidies for care provided in efficient health systems,” the article maintains.

Blumberg and Holahan call for a mandated public system, noting that research shows that without mandates, many people will remain uninsured because premiums will gobble up too much of their income – as much as 30%, according to the article, or about the same as rent or food.

Conceding that some federal subsidies will be needed, “most will go to the poorest and sickest – those who are most likely to enrol on a voluntary basis. Thus, a mandate will (also) bring healthier people and those with higher incomes into the system at a relatively low incremental cost, as compared with a voluntary approach with the added benefit of government financing redirected from the programs that currently cover uncompensated care.”

Whatever talking point the GOP rolls out today in its fight to keep America sick, remember that Republican staff people on the Hill admit all the party is trying to do is create scary “word pictures” to frighten the average cable news viewer. Republicans have always been good at twisting emotions and playing on fear. It’s past time for progressives to borrow a page from the Republican playbook and talk emotions, not just facts and figures.