"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
--1820 -- Thomas Jefferson
The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
-- John Adams
That’s a very nice, folksy, comforting video. Very well done, for amateurs. Maybe a little too well done. What do people think of this Coffee Party USA movement? I was enthusiastic about this group in a post below. This group just started — in fact they are “kicking off” officially today. But then doubts set in. I wonder what is value of getting people to vote and agree on some issue, as they did in this video. The end result is basically someone giving up their principles to reach a consensus just for the point of doing that. After quite a bit of thought, I don’t see the point of it. It’s not a political event, it’s like some psych-out therapy exercise. Who wins when you give up everything you believe in, just to agree? This is also my argument against this pointless quest for bipartisanship in the Congress.
This Coffee group makes members sign a “pledge of civility” on their website. I don’t like the Civility Pledge. It requires you to respect people who you disagree with on things — gay marriage, homophobia, bigotry, racism, whether Obama is mad socialist, etc. Why would I respect someone who thinks Obama was an illigitimate baby born in Kenya to Muslims? I don’t respect people who refuse to use their brains because life is easier that way.
Maybe the Coffee Party USA people haven’t yet actually met people in the Tea Party movement like I have. I have been shouted at by them in public, so I suppose I’m biased.
It’s unwise to try to force politeness in a newly developing major political movement/ group — especially when there are right-wingers on their website insulting liberals and progressives all over the place. The reason is simple — enthusiasm. People never volunteer for anything unless they are enthusiastic, and they stop being enthusiastic when you tell them they have to be civil and never insult people, or that they have to be open and inviting and lovely to people they can’t stand. Take away the idea of freedom to complain freely, and where would the enthusiasm come from — the thought of having a polite country? The pursuit of eternal middle-of-the-road consensus? Ridiculous.
I used the phrase “tea bagger” on Youtube (how shocking) in one of their video threads, and someone from the CPUSA group reprimanded me. A CPUSA official personage informed me that “tea bagger” was an insult (yeah, that’s the point) and that we can never talk with each other if we insult each other. Imagine that. This info was like a thunderclap from the heavens, let me tell you. I had an epiphany the moment I read that, and immediately un-fanned myself from their Facebook group. I just really don’t like to be told I shouldn’t insultgreedy racists who want to destroy the government. Seriously, this is good advice for Palestinians and Israelis, but not for people who have a serious problem with right-wingers who are trying to stop health care reform while people are dying. And the tea baggers wave around their insulting signs and angry displays at rallies and townhall meetings and show no respect for anyone. They don’t deserve my civility. I also have a problem being nice to people who lie to people about climate change just because they want lower taxes. I also have a problem respecting haters, bigots, homophobes, and idiots in general. Civility? I think not.
Standing in front of a sign saying you are honest does not mean that you are.
The strange, pointless quest by Democrats for “bipartisanship” must end.
Much is being made of the essay below called “I Am Angry” that was written recently, but I don’t think it will be terribly effective. No one in Washington will read it. People don’t vent directly, via phone or letter, to Congress enough. Progressives don’t even protest much anymore**, we let the Tea Baggers do that, so we are reduced to petitions, essays, writing columns, and blogging, all good things, but Washington doesn’t listen. And neither does the media. Right-wingers control talk radio and most news anchors are conservative, so progressives have a hard time getting out messages on a national level. That’s why it’s so easy to relate to an essay like I AM ANGRY. (It’s reprinted in full after the break).
The essay is a good summary of what progressives need to hold Democrats accountable for, though. I hear arguments like those listed in the essay from people on a regular basis. It’s written by a man who is disillusioned by the Democrats, and who can blame him. What have they accomplished in over a year? Bickering with the jerks in the Republican party is a waste of time. So some people aren’t just angry, they are disgusted. The main reason we are disgusted is that the Democrats look great on paper, but in reality they are corrupt, they take money from special interests, and they can get little done but talk, talk, talk. They never go far enough to do the right thing. What happened to the public option, and serious work on global warming? Where are all the green jobs they promised? They are far too bogged down in politics, and they still haven’t figured out how to get their message into the media in a way that successfully educates the public.
The Obama White House keeps making clever little websites. That does not reach Main Street, USA.
That’s politics. But what really makes us angry is that we never thought we’d have it this easy to push through a progressive agenda in our lifetimes. A Democratic president, a Democratic House and Senate. What could not get done, we thought.
So far, the Democrats have blown it. And we are not really at all sure they are the good guys anymore either (many aren’t). They don’t seem to have any boundaries on their ability to concede important things, at all. The Republican litmus test in the U.S. is abortion and gay marriage, but mostly abortion. If a conservative would not throw themselves in front of a train to stop abortion in this country, they are not a true Republican, according to their increasingly right-wing marching orders. There is no similar litmus test for Democrats on any subject or any topic any more, and they are in power. That’s remarkable. They are in the position of power because they are in the majority, and they don’t even have things they will hold on to, not sway on, not give up. That’s incredibly bizarre, from where I sit.
So, Democrats they don’t seem to stand for anything any more. Everything they seemingly stand for gets pulled apart and shredded every time a Republican yells or stamps their foot. They give away everything. They are giving the “climate bill” over to the coal and oil industries. (I think we need nuclear power and don’t agree it’s bailing out a failing industry. It was an industry that was stopped in its tracks due to fear).
How many times in our lifetime will the Democrats control 3 major branches of government? Maybe we need a new more left-wing political party, like the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party of my state (which was once pretty progressive but now takes it cues from the national party too often).
Don’t get me wrong, Republicans are the most corrupt, immoral and anti-human political party on earth. All they stand for is greed, profit, and helping out super-rich people and corporations. They even start wars for economic reasons, and defend torture. The Democrats need to respond seriously; get hardcore and stand up for what is right, instead of giving in on everything that comes along. We need single payer health care in America, Medicare for all, or call it buy-in Medicare, but we need it. We also need climate change legislation, not this watered-down baby food version to “stimulate jobs” that Senator John Kerry is working on with the [unprintable expletive] Senator Joe Lieberman. Democrats also need to get hardcore on trials for terror suspects and close down GITMO.
You know what else Democrats could do ? They could stop the useless war in Afghanistan if they wanted to save some money, and lives, which they say they want to do. Saving money by cutting social programs or health care is insane without closing military bases and ending wars for resources or no apparent purpose at all. Get with it Democrats! Or you are losing us!
You won’t see this in the mainstream media because they don’t care much about debating the purpose or value of the Afghanistan war, and they don’t care about protest groups unless it’s the Tea Partiers. There was a 3-hour debate today on the floor of the Congress on the Dennis Kucinich bill to remove our soldiers from Afghanistan. (See the post below this one). Kucinich was trying to pass his “Privileged Resolution”
to end the Afghan War. He wrote,
Washington has a lot of money. It has trillions for war, but no money for housing. Money for war, but no money for health care. Money for war, but no money for education. Money for war – no money to rebuild our cities. No money to create jobs, but money for war.
So they debated today, and it was an important debate, but it will probably receive very little American media attention. The bill failed, but at least there was a debate. This is one of the speeches given during the debate. Congressman Kennedy questions our priorities, as should everyone in Congress. He wonders where the press is too.
The video below is of protesters who were in Washington this weekend, demanding health care reform. Not the fake Tea Bagger protesters who are funded by lobbyists and the Freedom Watchers and Faux News, but real people who showed up in Washington to demand health care legislation because they need it. There were thousands there demanding health care legislation.
“Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean was the featured speaker of the event that was attended by about 2,000 people from across the nation. This video features interviews from members of Billionaires for Health Care, Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Montgomery Health Care Action, and a top adviser from Health Care for America Now.”
No media was present today during the Afghanistan War debate in Congress, a debate that went on for 3 hours and is ending as I write this, in a vote to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, or not. Most of Congress did not bother to show up either, because war has now become so automatic and ho-hum that few in government think it even needs to be debated any more. It’s been labeled as “the good war” even though it most certainly is not. See below for more on that.
Our media does not care about important issues of war and peace, but they sure do care if some obscure, obnoxious Congressman has been groping people or getting drunk at weddings. That is hugely important to our brain-dead media. (And I include progressive media in that description). Seriously, that NY Congressman is all MSNBC and other networks have talked about for about 2 days now. Meanwhile, the press does not care about whether or not Congress wants to end the war in Afghanistan. They barely care that Israel is building more and more new settlements and further throwing a wrench into the so-called peace process.
Discussions of war and peace make us wonder — what would make America more safe as a country? Many people think ending our wars, ending the “war on terror”, and closing GITMO and the 700 military bases we have all over the world would greatly improve our safety, and I agree. Our alliance with Israel clearly makes us less safe — our overly “friendly” and forgiving association with the one violent country that threatens Palestine and Lebanon and others the most. The country that announced new settlements the same day Vice President Biden arrived, as if to stick it in his face and challenge us to stop sending them billions in weapons and aid every year. Everyone knows this too-close and too-helpful association is the root of Middle Eastern problems with the United States. The U.S. should call Israel’s bluff on the new settlements anouncement and immediately cut off all money, weapons, protection and aid. With friends like these . . . .
“JERUSALEM — Hours after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed unyielding American support for Israel’s security here on Tuesday, Israel’s Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. Mr. Biden condemned the move as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”
Now that is a big “F- you” to the Vice President and President, isn’t it? Why do we put up with this? Maybe because wars keep the unemployment numbers from rising into the stratosphere, so we need to keep up this charade of being a peace-loving country while waging wars all over the place. After all, Iran is acting up and we don’t like countries that don’t do what we tell them, do we? There might be a new war to support soon, in this lovely relationship, yet again. Israel starts a war with Iran, and the narrative says that we would have their backs, in every way. Of course, many voices are calling for war with Iran.
To get the ball rolling, Israel needs to continue to anger everyone around them.
“Israel has given the green light for the building of 112 new homes in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank despite a partial moratorium on such construction, a minister said on Monday.
Coffee and common sense? That’s part of the advertised combination of the new Coffee Party groups. The premise is that that Tea Party groups do not represent real America. (They don’t represent any country or mentality I’m aware of, except the deranged one.) In contrast to the cynical, angry tea baggers, there is another group for Americans. The group is national and has both a Facebook site and a website too, CoffeePartyUSA.com. There are individual state groups also. Apparently this got going a while ago, because the first meeting in my area was at a local coffee shop at the end of February. Check their website to see if there is a group in your area. The national kick-off is on March 13. Here is a great explanation for what is fueling this.
I agree with her (in this video). The goal? Well, it’s not to destroy government or arm everyone with automatic weapons and handguns, not surprisingly. It’s to get Congress to work for us, their employers, and to get our government to work again, and to stop the obstructionism, and to show the world the Tea Baggers do not represent most of America. Only a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of it.
Over 330 people have been killed by taser use in the United States. And the use of tasers is growing in the UK.
Amnesty International says 334 people in the US died between 2001 and 2008 after the stun guns were used on them. Taser International, the Arizona-based manufacturer, dismisses these findings. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
A commuter in a diabetic coma, an 89-year-old man and children as young as 12 – just some of the targets of British police armed with skin-piercing 50,000-volt Taser guns. As the Home Office investigates bringing an even more powerful rifle version to Britain, Jason Benetto reports on the slow creep of arms onto our streets.
by Jason Benetto
The smartly dressed sales executive travelling on the number 96 bus across Leeds didn’t notice his body descending into a state of severe hypoglycaemia.
Amnesty International says 334 people in the US died between 2001 and 2008 after the stun guns were used on them. Taser International, the Arizona-based manufacturer, dismisses these findings. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
He didn’t have time to ask his fellow passengers for help, or press the bell. Instead he slumped back in his seat in a diabetic coma, his head lolling from side to side.
This was why he wore a special tag and chain around his neck: it advertised his diabetes. His mother and father, both retired GPs, had encouraged their son to wear it ever since he had started having to take insulin 20 years earlier.
Nicholas Gaubert had been looking forward to a drink with friends in the suburb of Headingley after work. Instead he was critically ill, unconscious on the top deck of a bus continuing its route north through the early evening rush-hour traffic.
Some 40 minutes later, it terminated at the Holt Park depot and the driver checked his vehicle. He was used to turfing drunks off the night bus at weekends, but it was Wednesday and the man apparently fast asleep on the top deck was far from dishevelled.
Support Congressman Kucinich in debating Afghanistan War
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is one of the few members of Congress who actually deserves to be there.
By Robert Naiman
Information Clearing House– On Thursday, March 4th, 2010, Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced H. Con Res. 248, a privileged resolution with 16 original cosponsors that will require the House of Representatives to debate whether to continue the war in Afghanistan. Debate on the resolution is expected early next week.
Original cosponsors of the Kucinich resolution include John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI); Ron Paul (R-TX); José Serrano (D-NY); Bob Filner (D-CA); Lynn Woolsey (D-CA); Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC); Danny Davis (D-IL); Barbara Lee (D-CA); Michael Capuano (D-MA); Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ); Tammy Baldwin (D-WI); Timothy Johnson (R-IL); Yvette Clarke (D-NY); Eric Massa (D-NY); Alan Grayson (D-FL); and Chellie Pingree (D-ME).
The Pentagon doesn’t want Congress to debate Afghanistan. The Pentagon wants Congress to fork over $33 billion more to pay for the current military escalation, no questions asked, no restrictions imposed for a withdrawal timetable or an exit strategy.
Ideally, from the point of view of the Pentagon, Congress would fork over that money right away, before the coming Kandahar offensive that the $33 billion is supposed to pay for, because you can expect a lot of bad news out of Afghanistan in the form of deaths of American soldiers and Afghan civilians once the Kandahar offensive starts, and it would sure be awkward if all that bad news reached Washington while the $33 billion was hanging fire.
So it’s a great thing that Rep. Kucinich and his 16 allies are forcing Congress to debate the issue, and it would be even better if more Members of Congress would be urged by their constituents to support Kucinich’s resolution. That would be a signal to the House leadership that continuation of the open-ended war and occupation is controversial in the House, and the House leadership should not try to ram through $33 billion more for the war on a fast-track without ample opportunity for debate and amendment.
Every day the Afghanistan war continues is another day on which the United States Government plays Russian Roulette with the lives of American soldiers and Afghan civilians.
The British Government has more urgency than the U.S. government about ending the war – and is more supportive than the U.S. of a political solution to end the conflict – because in Britain there is greater public outcry.
If there were greater public and Congressional outcry in the U.S., we could be more like Britain, and get our government on board the train to a political solution, instead of prolonging the war indefinitely.
Republicans love coal so much they eat it for breakfast.
The Republican attacks on clean air, clean water, and stopping climate change are getting completely out of control.
Do Republicans really want to live on a planet — the only one we’ve got, by the way — where the air is choking us and the water is poisoning us (this is literally happening in parts of the U.S.) and storms from climate change are rendering parts of the U.S. nearly uninhabitable? Because that’s happening right now, yet they want us to stop doing anything about it.
It’s within our power to stop polluting, to stop trashing our planet, but for some reason this is considered something that only concerns liberal people, as if only progressives need air to breathe. Strong, manly Republicans can breath dirty air and drink poisoned water and withstand Category 7 Hurricanes. This is what they would have you think — that we can survive increasing pollution that is adding arsenic and barium and selenium and benzine and mercury to our water and food supplies. Maybe their strong, muscular and hairy women can survive these toxins too, but what about their children? Even Republican children are vulnerable to poison and filthy air.
All facetiousness aside, these attacks on our home land (the real Homeland is Planet Earth, not the U.S.) need to be stopped. Look at what Republicans are doing to our very ability to live on this planet. They are blocking all climate change legislation and even trying to block EPA pollution regulations across the country.
All members of Congress (including Blue Democrats) really have to do is stop accepting money from Big Oil and Big Coal lobbyists and do the right thing — shut down coal plants and vote to encourage renewable energy. Pollution and dirty energy also deeply affects health care, because the more pollution allowed into our environment, the more sick people end up in emergency rooms unable to breath. The leader of the Congressional liars about climate change and environmental issues is Senator James Inhofe. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) isn’t much better. Murkowski said yesterday (via E&E Daily, subscription only) that she would not consider voting for the climate package without drilling in ANWR. “I’m still saying ANWR is one of the must-haves,” Murkowski said. She believes in drilling for as much oil as we can, and to hell with the planet. Who needs a planet to live on, anyway? Socialist Liberals, that’s who.
Inhofe is a dishonest snake, a man who has no conscience whatsoever. He wants his grandchildren to live in a garbage dump, which is what the country will be if the Republicans get their way. He is on a veritable crusade to destroy the EPA and any pollution controls.
[Sen. Inhofe's] Minority Report released by Inhofe’s staff contains 83 pages of false and misleading statements, shameful accusations, and a list of federal laws allegedly broken that threatens 17 climate scientists with prosecution. In other words, this is the worst case of political thuggery since Senator Joseph McCarthy first employed these tactics 60 years ago.
ACORN was unjustly smeared by the right-wingers last year, in a campaign against them based on lies and fabrications. The masters of propaganda in the Republican party, including Michele Bachmann, really dug in with the lies against ACORN. As a result ACORN, (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) was denied more federal funding and was forced to split up. The pimpy-looking guy doing the legwork to pursue these lies was an operative named James O’Keefe, who pretended to be a “journalist”. Nobody told him that journalists don’t make up stories and pass them off as true. That’s the job of Republican right-wingers. Whoever hired O’Keefe to put on that little show in ACORN and then heavily edit the video beyond all recognition probably felt that by association, the destruction of ACORN would somehow harm President Obama. O’Keefe turned out to be a total fraud and a liar, and later got into a bit of legal trouble. He’s now up on federal felony charges, something pretty serious even for a faux pimp. Astonishingly, his entire, outrageous and fraudulent story was believed and published by the New York Times. They naively bought the whole thing.
If you think it’s strange that the biggest newspaper in the U.S. is so gullible, it’s not really that odd. Remember NYT reporter Judith Miller believed the Iraq WMD claims from the Bush White House via Scooter Libby, and the NYT was largely responsible for the public and the rest of the media believing the Bush lies. Miller spent some time in jail defending her “sources”, which were all liars out of the Bush White House. Defending liars isn’t noble and shouldn’t be protected, but she acted like a martyr througout. She should probably have spent a few years in jail for lying to the public about WMDs, which she did, many times. Just like the New York Times reporters now believe the liar O’Keefe, as described below, Judith Miller believed the lies of the Bush administration, repeated them, embellished them, struck fear into the hearts of many Americans, and then the New York Times helped lead us into a war against a country with no WMDs. Iraq, of course, was no threat to us at all. And these Neocons and the New York Times are still pushing lies on the public. The New York Times has an ongoing problem with truth and journalistic ethics.
Make sure you check out the whole story at the Brad Blog. Brad writes:
“. . . . Much more crazy in the full strip. (see sample on the right)
The quote in the above panel is taken from the mindblowing emails Hoyt sent to me recently, as one of his reasons for not recommending the “paper of record” issue retractions for their repeatedly inaccurate and misreported coverage of the James O’Keefe/Andrew Breitbart ACORN video “pimp” hoax. . . “
Below is the whole story, released on March 4th, by ACORN. Help them if you can, as they were badly damaged by the cowardly smear campaign against them. Take action here. They are asking that 100,000 supporters send letters to the editor of your local newspaper, or the New York Times, to help correct these fabricated stories about them.
From ACORN: “By now everybody knows that James O’Keefe, the anti-ACORN video stinger, is willing to lie, manipulate, and apparently break the law, in pursuit of his extremist agenda. Monday, sources inside the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, as reported by the New York Post (long hostile to ACORN) said the videos were a “heavily edited splice job“.[1] The New York Daily News further reported that sources in the DA’s office, which reviewed the unedited New York tapes as part of a five month investigation — the first time anyone not associated with O’Keefe has seen unedited tapes — said “they edited the tape to meet their agenda“![2]
As Media Matters columnist Eric Bohlert writes, “the ’70s-era, blacksploitation pimp costume was a propaganda tool used to later deceive the public about the undercover operation.”[3] If you watched the videos you probably thought he wore that suit inside our offices. He didn’t. He dressed as a professional and presented himself as a boyfriend trying to help his girlfriend escape from an abusive pimp, something also noted in former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger’s December 2009 investigation of ACORN.[4]
Last night, Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida and Tea Party Queen Michele Bachmann of Minnesota (I can’t call her a Representative because she does not represent her constituents) squared off with a ‘debate’ on health care on Larry King. For about 6 minutes. It wasn’t much of a debate because Bachmann needed to broadcast the mandatory talking points uploaded into her cerebral cortex by the right-wing of the Republican party before her appearance. This talking point tangent sidetracked the debate into a brief conversation about a wacky conspiracy theory concerning secret meetings and judges. It was a total load of moldy baloney, but that’s what the GOP serves up these days. None of it made any sense. This is what we have come to expect of Tea Party Queen Bachmann. It didn’t even look like Larry King was enjoying the conversation.
Bachmann is either a pre-programmed, robotic Congresswoman sent out like a human drone to drop official GOP propaganda on the public, or a person who has a compulsive lying problem, or maybe both. She’s a loyal Republican, there is no doubt about that. She will be replaced in 2010, if there is any sanity left in Minnesota at all. The only people here who like her since she has stepped up her McCarthyism tactics and conspiracy theories are the right-wing fringey types, and they are currently enjoying a small progressive backlash in the opinion pages in some local newspapers.
The White House has called her groundless accusations “absurd”. This is how Republicans debate health care — they dodge the question and bring up lies about something else.
Right-wingers in America have taken over the dialogue in the U.S., taken over the media, moved the entire country to the right, labeled a moderate-right President a “socialist,” blocked health care reform and other good things like taking care of the environment; and now they have completely destroyed what was once a peaceful religion: Christianity. Believe it or not, Christianity at one time taught forgiveness and love, not war and hatred. You would never know that from the new invention passing as the “Christian” religion brandished by the right-wing in the U.S. This includes Tea Baggers, who feel “God” is on their side. (Even Andrew Sullian feels the core of the Tea Party movement is “christianist“.)
Right-wingers, the worst of them, (the fanatical believers in God being a man surrounded by vaults full of money) destroy everything they touch, including the philosophy and teachings of peaceful men. Liberals and progressives need to stop them and remove the cancer of their influence from this country. If you are a liberal or a progressive then you have to act, especially this year, because it’s an election year. We have to fight the growing influence of the Tea Baggers and the right-wing nuts, in part because these are dangerous, violent people. They are non-compassionate people who love war and claim to be Christians and this world has seen all this before. Don’t you just love the irony? Don’t just sit back and laugh at them. They do not go away by being laughed out of the room (believe me; I have tried it). They are a movement of anger and rage and greed, and that makes them dangerous. A large facet of the Republican party, led by Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, has become a blatant hate group. And yes, their god sucks because their God stands for war, greed, poverty, bigotry, and death. There has been a new study on these people, the right-wing hate groups:
Rage on the Right
The Year in Hate and Extremism
The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation.
Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called “Patriot” groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight. . . . .
It’s puzzling. Other countries — poorer countries — have better health care systems than the United States does and they also offer less expensive treatment. The U.S. has a system where insurance company employees and executives and CEOs make millions of dollars a year basically doing nothing but denying coverage to people who are sick and need help. Yet in America, billions and billions requested for war, defense, the military and the Pentagon is always granted without question.
Why do we have this system? Because people are greedy and the U.S. has the biggest war machine on the planet. If it’s not maintained, our economy would greatly suffer. It’s the system that Republicans love and are fighting to keep going as is, because there is a lot of profit in this system for them personally. They call care for the poor and the sick and the needy “entitlements”. On its face, it’s a very strange point of view, especially for those who don’t understand why unmitigated greed seems to run every aspect of the lives of some Americans. That’s what Republicans stand for (and their Tea Bag wing) — greed. Greed, profit, and more greed. They do not care about American lives or security, but they love all that money flowing around.
People who are sick, or hungry, or who just need help, are not something to be profited from, and meeting their needs is not giving them “entitlements”. It’s giving them the basics of life, or what any civilized country should provide to its citizens. It’s common sense that you don’t let people die of sickness in a civilized country just because some lack the funds to pay for health care. The price of health care is fixed by society to begin with, not by the sick person. That makes it completely unfair for the sick person to die or suffer because they don’t have enough money to pay for health care to fix their illness. (The same price fixing is true for food and shelter). The price that was determined had nothing to do with them, and had no input from them. These things are decided by insurance companies, hospitals, the government, and the Health Insurance Pharma Complex.
Yet it seems America has money to burn when it comes to “defense”. And of course the U.S. has to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that no one ever questions on “defense” because hundreds of countries are trying to attack us, right? Well, no . . . . but a few terrorists occasionally break through our hundreds of billions of dollars of defense spending and get on a plance and light something on fire, like a shoe or their boxers. That takes hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent, and even that isn’t enough. (And next year there might be two of them instead of one!) And of course there are all those people in the Middle East that we are busy telling how to live while we accidently drop bombs on their convoys and houses. That’s costly. But hey, people are employed, even if they don’t have health care that’s worth crap.
It’s really, really expensive to stick our big American noses into the lives of other people in far-away lands and tell them how to live and what crops to grow and all that. That’s because we believe in the human rights of kids to go to school, of course. (Though in America, public schools are under attack by the very people who love funding the wars the most.) Odd.
Pentagon panel has contractor contacts
WASHINGTON — More than half of the panel members appointed to review the Pentagon’s latest four-year strategy blueprint have financial ties to defense contractors with a stake in the planning process, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
Congress created the 20-member panel in 2006 to analyze the Defense Department’s four-year plan, known as the Quadrennial Defense Review. Lawmakers called for the committee to provide an independent “alternate view” of the Pentagon’s plan, which shapes future military policy and spending on weapons and other needs. A dozen of the unpaid panelists were appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and eight by the top Republican and Democrat members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees. Eleven work for defense contractors as employees, consultants or board directors, records show. (see more below)
When unquenchable greed gets in the way, you will find things rebranded to make them more publicly acceptable. Spending billions on weapons we don’t really need is “necessary” and for our “security” but feeding the hungry, or providing medical care is somehow “socialism.” That is the epitome of the U.S. Greed Culture in action. We have no money to provide people in this so-called civilized country with health care, a basic requirement of life, but we do have money for weapons, war and whatever the Pentagon and their greedy contractor friends ask for. How much health care could $70 million in defense contracts pay for? How much money have we poured down the cavernous maws of the war profiteers BLACKWATER and KBR and HALLIBURTON? Does anyone protest this waste of our money?
But it’s not even the defense contractors I have an issue with — it’s that we spend so much on something we don’t need while things we do need for our own people are neglected or even denied, or rebranded as “socialism” or “entitlements”. Well, spending billions on weapons we don’t need and shouldn’t ever use is also socialism — it’s the Military Industrial Complex benefiting from all the money Congress can throw at it. Whatever the monster asks for, it gets. Not a single Republican who yells about how much everything costs, when it’s helping people, has ever voted against war or Pentagon spending. NOT ONE.
James Inhofe leads the charge in the United States against any action on climate change.
Guess who’s responsible for most of the climate change witch hunt against real scientists? It’s Congress’s very own James Inhofe, a right-wing Republicon from Oklahoma. This batty old dude flew to Copenhagen’s climate conference in December, surrounded by thousands of people from around the world there to solve the climate crisis — to declare there was no such thing as man-made climate change! That takes not courage, not cojones, but lots of hoppin’ mad brain cells.
Scientists beg to differ. When will right-wingers come up with some actual ideas for a change? This country is in serious need of real ideas.
Many Republicans are mentally ill in many ways (some in amusing ways, some in ways very damaging to the country) so it’s no surprise that one of their “stars” has apparent mental problems too. In fact, the more “out there” Republicans are, the more they seem to be given center stage in the party. I’m not making light of mentally ill people here at all. It’s something that should be taken very seriously. If some of our members of Congress are seriously mentally ill and not receiving treatment, they should probably be impeached or at least voted out of office until they get well. If Michele Bachmann is truly ill, she should take a leave of absence and enter a hospital. If she is retarded or otherwise restricted from correctly processing information, she should be removed from office and maybe be given a job assembling simple objects somewhere — maybe little American flags in China.
Evidence for illness or retardation is repeated every time she tries to communicate with the outside world. Congresswoman Bachmann (R-MN) repeatedly puts out emails to her constituents (of which I am one) that do not represent reality in any way. She repeatedly lies in these communications. She does not listen to or read what her constituents tell her. She does not seem to understand events or what happened during them. Maybe she can’t read or process information. We know she was once a tax attorney but maybe processing information is a skill that she had to study hard and practice, and upon entering the Congress, perhaps she lost that skill. It’s hard to otherwise explain today’s email to her constituents:
“Americans Lose at the White House Health Care Summit
In the days leading up to last week’s “bipartisan” health care summit, I was skeptical about how productive such an event would ultimately be, seeing as how Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Senior Health Care Advisor Wendell Primus was already on record saying that the Democrats would implement a legislative “trick” to pass their very unpopular version of health care reform.
Well, it looks like my reservations about the summit have proven to be true. Democrats are saying that Republicans can’t be worked with and are plowing ahead with the controversial process of reconciliation to ram through their health care plans despite the overwhelming rejection of this legislation by the American people.
The health care reform currently before Congress should pass by a simple majority vote, which is what most Americans expect. In fact, most Americans probably think that is how it works, but due to ongoing Republican obstructionism that insists on a 60 vote super majority vote (which is non-constitutional) we do not yet have health care reform. This is wrong.
Democrats should pass it with a majority vote and do it as soon as possible. Lives are on the line and people are dying. This is not about winning or losing or egos on the line, this is about people living and dying. It’s a moral issue and Republicans have been, to date, shamefully immoral on the issue of health care. They vote for war funding after war funding, and even vote for health care for the people we are at war with, including prisoners of war, but Americans are not worthy of health care, according to Republicans. This is insane, and it’s got to end. We should not have unlimited funds for war and no funds to provide universal health care for the people in this country.
Please call your Senators and tell them to pass health care reform with reconciliation as soon as possible, before any more people die due to the mindless obstructionism of Republicans.
According to Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, health care reform has a good chance to pass with a majority vote using reconciliation. He told the Thom Hartmann radio show today that right-wingers constantly complain that reconciliation has not been used on an issue this big, but it has in fact been used on a bill that was even bigger. Republicans have used reconciliation at least 21 times. In the 1990s, Republicans used reconciliation to give tax breaks to billionaires. In the 1990s, the Republicans also passed the reconciliation process itself in the enormous bill called the Contract with America. It was huge comprehensive legislation that was vetoed, fortunately, by Bill Clinton. The bill attempted to change Medicare, tax breaks, environmental issues, health care, and more, all for the worse.
Spread this around, as it nicely refutes the erroneous claim that the IPCC climate change science is not valid. Of course, it is. It also somewhat describes the process by which the reports are written.
Photo: Reuters A farmer shows a yellowing leaf of a vegetable seedling in a field in drought-hit Chenggong county, Yunnan province February 24, 2010.
Climate Scientists Defend IPCC Peer Review as Most Rigorous in History
The peer review process at the heart of the UN climate science panel is one of the most rigorous in the “history of science,” climate scientists said as they attempted to shore up trust in an institution that has been battered in the media.
“It is hard to conceive of a more comprehensive and transparent process than that used by the IPCC,” said Neville Nicholls, a climate scientist and lead writer on parts of the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
An error in the 3,000-page IPCC report that exaggerated the rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers has triggered claims of sloppiness in the panel’s peer-review procedures, and the UN said today it would appoint an independent panel to review the planet’s top climate science body.
If you are interested in seeing how the Taliban operate, you might want to watch a very interesting video from PBS: Behind Enemy Lines. A journalist is embedded with the Taliban, and they seem like anything but an army. They are dirty, cold, hungry, pitiful guys who’d rather be playing cards or something. They keep asking, “What should we do?” This is what we are spending billions on fighting and it makes the whole war seem like a joke. These hapless “insurgents” can’t seem to do anything right, yet they are kicking our butt in their country, where perhaps they just want us to leave. Remember how the Taliban/mujahadin kicked the Russians’s butt? The mid-level Taliban manager in this video also describes how they got rid of the Russians, and the Russians were stronger than the U.S. They appear to have all the patience in the world while American patience on this war is wearing out fast.
At the same time, our military leaders feel obliged to wave the shame stick at those who are less warmongering than the violence-loving U.S. Juan Cole, who is the Middle East expert I find most readable at Informed Comment, comments on Robert Gates, pictured below.
Gates Wants Europe to ‘Beggar Itself’ on War Expenditures the Way the US Has
"What's wrong with you Europeans?? Why don't you like war like America does, you commies!"
But as far as I can tell, Europe is the world’s largest economy and got there without any recent substantial wars except those the US dragged it into. Moreover, the fastest-growing economy for the past nearly 30 years has been China, which spends a fraction on their military of what the US spends on its, and, aside from a skirmish with Vietnam in the early 1980s, has been at peace. Apparently massive war expenditures are unrelated to economic growth or prosperity.
In contrast, the US has been at war for 19 of the last 47 years (not counting US-backed insurgencies such as 1980s Afghanistan, on which we spent billions) but has not grown faster than the other two economically. Moreover, the increasingly unwieldy US national debt, deriving from the US government spending more than it took in in recent decades, would not exist if the US military budget had been the same as that of the European Union since 1980.
Temporary transgenic. Fluorescing protein shows tobacco leaf's pharming potential. CREDIT: BAYER AG
Stop smoking! That tobacco might cure the swine flu!
Texas A&M and a company have received a $40 million grant from DARPA to make swine flu vaccine from tobacco—part of a push to produce drugs and vaccines using plants, according to ScienceMag.
“The Texas A&M University System and a Texas company have been awarded a $40 million U.S. Department of Defense grant to develop vaccines made from tobacco rather than the antiquated egg-based technology that made the response to last year’s swine flu outbreak so slow.”
It sounds crazy but there is some scientific merit to it. (See below). It’s also partially because, unlike like a thousand other types of plants, tobacco has no safe or healthy use whatsoever, so they had to discover one. And it’s another opportunity for Big Tobacco to get some of its money back from the government fines of the last decades.
“A number of cell-culture based technologies, using sources from cocker spaniels to caterpillars, are the subject of research. But Giroir said the tobacco-based technology is the farthest along. [of course] Delaware researchers successfully tested the model on ferrets, which can get influenza, and researchers at A&M and the private company G-Con have used Texas’ Emerging Technology Fund money to further develop it.
Giroir said tobacco is a good source for growing flu proteins because it has been studied extensively and grows easily. It is free of nicotine. [since when?]
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates 
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