Lifting Clouds

The Fall is usually a time of bleaker economic news than the rest of the year. Not so much this year:

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Fewer Americans filed claims for jobless benefits last week, another sign the economy is pulling out of the worst recession since the 1930s.

Applications fell by 10,000 to 570,000, a higher level than forecast, in the week ended Aug. 22 from a revised 580,000 the week before, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance fell to the lowest level since April.

Companies’ staff cuts are easing as government stimulus measures help stabilize the housing and manufacturing industries. At the same time, a rebound in hiring will take longer to occur, restraining the consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy.

[...]A separate report from the Commerce Department showed the U.S. economy contracted less than forecast in the second quarter as a jump in government spending and smaller cutbacks by consumers helped mitigate a record plunge in inventories.

I won't bore you with an analysis of that last paragraph. Suffice it to say that companies are running leaner operations than they had been, and the economy is starting to drift back towards growth.

The wildly successful Cash For Clunkers program, ended Monday but launched July 24, wasn't even a factor in the 2nd quarter, which means that the 3rd quarter will probably show a further slowing in the rate of recession, if not a turnaround.

New homes sales rose ten percent in July, which is an amazing leap when you factor in the thought that mortgage lending was nearly non-existent until the second TARP bailout enacted under President Obama. Still, sales are off 13.4% from July 2008. July 2009 was the fourth straight month to show a gain in new home sales.

That's not to say housing is out of the woods yet. Lending to builders is still tighter than a maiden aunt's ass which means new home construction, a vital component of the American economy, is moribund. What you're seeing is the sale of previously built homes that sat empty.

Still, things could be much worse and the economy could be in a lot worse shape than it is. Right now, things are still teetering on the precipice like a Keystone Kops clown car. We could still tumble.

But at least I have faith that this driver is not going to put the car back into gear and drive us off the cliff like the last President nearly did!

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

What can be said about Ted Kennedy that you haven't read a million other places today?

The life of the last remaining true progressive authority (there are others more liberal, to be sure, like Russ Feingold or Bernie Sanders) can be summed up in one way I doubt you've read anyplace else.

For all his flaws and faults, he became the lightning rod for right wing hatred.

You don't see Rush Limbaugh making fun of Feingold. You don't see anyone making fun of Bernie Sanders. In his death, even, the right wing extremists are making fun of Ted Kennedy.

You know what that tells me? It tells me that he had them terrified.

Ted Kennedy not only represented a link to a time when liberal legislation was effected, heck, even admired (civil rights, Social Security and Medicare, clean air and water), he ultimately came to embody those core principles of liberal philosophy.

Our lives are better for Ted Kennedy's existence. Here was a wealthy man who understood that rising tides may lift all boats, but that we need not wait for a rising tide to fix those boats that are leaky and in need of repair.

Conservative muttonheads knew this, which is why they toiled so hard to keep mocking his weight or his affairs or his one moment of avoidable tragedy.

Granted, there are some mistakes you never stop paying for, and the tragic death of Mary Jo should be one of those, but that those knucklebrains couldn't find fault with his legislative savvy or his programs and policies speaks volumes about their fear of Kennedy.

Indeed, one might make the case that life's plan included having Kennedy demeaned and belittled, as it would make him a more effective legislator, able to be scrutinized for himself, and not his stances. The distraction became the illusion became the reality.

When JFK said in 1961 "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans," I wonder if he knew the last surviving torchbearer would be his younger brother, Ted?

I raise my voice and join the chorus of those who have asked that the healthcare reform that Ted Kennedy fought so hard to enact in his lifetime be passed immediately, that President Obama call a special session of Congress, and insist that a public option be included, and that the "Senator Edward M. Kennedy Healthcare Reform Bill of 2009" be passed by unanimous voice vote, in tribute to this man, this great man, this lion of the left.

The torch has been dropped, my friends. Who among us will agree to pick it up, for Ted's sake?

Days Of Swine And Roses

It could get ugly this fall:

Up to half of the population of the U.S. could come down with the swine flu and 90,000 could die this season, according to a dire report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

[...]"It's a plausible scenario that we need to be prepared for," said Marty Cetron, the Center for Disease Control's director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine.

The report says that under a worst-case scenario, between 60 and 120 million Americans could get sick with the swine flu and another 30 million could contract the virus but not show symptoms. Between 30,000 and 90,000 could die -- more than twice the annual average of deaths associated with the seasonal flu. Those deaths generally occur in people older than 65.

It should be noted that swine flu eruptions continue throughout the northern hemisphere, despite the onset of summer weather, which usually mitigates flu outbreaks.

So we're looking at a highly contagious, highly infectious disease that shows signs of only strengthening as people are forced into closer contact behind closed doors.

Not fun.

Keep in mind that a far larger percentage than normal of those getting ill with this flu will be younger, healthy adolescents and young adults. It's not clear if the same hiccup in the affected age will trend in the death statistics. One presumes that a healthy adult will be in a far better position to fight off a bug than the elderly, very young, or infirm.

But...

The 1918 flu pandemic saw an unusual spike in young adults precisely because of the nature of that virus (more avian than swine) and possibly because it was similar to another flu outbreak 30 years earlier.

With swine flu and avian flu currently exposed to one another in the southern hemisphere, it would be prudent to follow this story a bit more closely than current surveys indicate it has been.

It could be ugly. It might not be. My guess is it will be uglier than the CDC and HHS are making it out to be, particularly once the vaccine runs low.

Vacation, Have To Get Away

It astounds me the hoopla raised over a simple week away from the White House:

Senior White House officials have not ruled out the possibility of a town hall -- which, in Obama world, might qualify as a fun vacation activity.

That's probably not First Lady Michelle Obama's notion of the ideal vacation. For months, aides have been planning as normal a summer getaway as possible, whittling down the possible sites until they found a secluded spot on a tony island, where stars and presidents have long been able to expect privacy.

It is, in my opinion, not coincidental that the networks scheduled all these Republicans (including Joe LiebeRman) to speak this weekend, just as the video of Obama stepping off a plane in the Vineyard hit the wires.

After all, we all recall what happened the first summer that Bush took six weeks off to vacation:
But I digress...

The concern trolling on the part of the Republicans (including Joe LiebeRman) has been touching but unnecessary. After all, when Bush was running up half trillion dollar deficits during our last recession...you recall? The one that lasted nearly his entire first term?...no one seemed to mind. Indeed, Veep Cheney pointed out that deficits don't matter.

So long as you're running a war of aggression on a people half a world away that did nothing to harm you.

Once you actually try to help people, well, Katie bar the door!

Even a Nobel Prize-winning economist seems to think the Republicans (including Joe LiebeRman) are talking out their asses.

Others have pointed out that, just because the US government runs a postal service, private businesses are still highly competitive and highly profitable, and that is a good analogy. After all, the US government is mandated by Congress to provide affordable mail delivery to each and every address in the United States. Neither UPS nor Fedex could possibly achieve that and make a profit. They can make a profit on niches that the USPS can't really focus its resources on.

It's called limiting a bureaucracy.

But I put a different case: unions.

Some would make the claim that the government getting into the health insurance business would put private insurance out of work.

Bullshit.

There are union workplaces, and non-union, and if anything, the non-union places seem to be more competitive once the trouble of swallowing the fall-out from union-based benefits is worked through.

After all, if a union shop gets a vacation concession, other companies will start to lose workers to those union shops that have greater goodies, until they too offer more competitive employment benefits.

Then things straighten up and fly right and non-union shops can still gouge their workers in other areas.

What unions provide is a single large entity that can negotiate with large corporations, thus balancing an equation that is woefully tilted against an individual worker.

Government ideally should be the firewall between individuals and corporations, but sadly that has been co-opted by the SCOTUS, which has ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals, plus a few more. Among those rights is the right to free speech, and by extension, to donate to political campaigns.

The concentration of cash in a corporation's coffers makes this a slam-dunk: they will buy candidates that individuals could not possibly afford.

Except thru unions, of course.

The analogy coalesces when one realizes that any health care reform must include a governmental component whereby doctors, hospitals, and yes, insurance companies must deal with some entity with the resources that a government can bring to bear in an industry.

Just like a union can legitimately be the only organ an individual can use to address the inequities of the working world.

This is the sole legitimate function of government: to protect its citizenry.

Amen.

Quick Admin Note

I know, it's been awfully quiet here on the ranch.

Mea culpa. I left for vacation in such a rush that I forgot to ask Katrina to come in and feed the cat (THUMBPER adds, "Dass riet! Ah had ta et howseplans awl wik!").

And I forgot to set up a bunch of posts to tide you guys over.

I'll figure some way to make it all up to you folks, even you, Stoopid!. Sorry about that.

A Day In The Life

A Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican"

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.

He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, "We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have".

And that is the truest thing I've read all damn year.

Thank a fucking Liberal. Every damn day.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) RIP, Les Paul. The finest guitar I've ever laid hands on was a 1959 Les Paul that my buddy saved for years to buy. Astounding instrument, astounding man. Go read his obit.

 

2) Senator Webb is in Burma to plead for Aung San Suu Kyi. Clever move on Obama's part. Webb could end up with a Noble Peace Prize for this.

 

3) I am glad this situation was resolved with little outcry. This man deserves no clemency.

 

4) It's getting so in California that they should have two seasons: winter and fire. Glad I didn't move out there when I had the chance!

 

5) Thanks for pointing that out, Captain Obvious!

 

6) But we brought them FREEEDOM!

 

7) Sometimes Apple pisses even me off with their delays.

 

8) I think Brad Pitt underestimates his chances. He has two things going for him: Angelina's tits and...wait, THREE things going for him...

 

9) Remember that moran at the Specter town hall meeting who kept running his mouth about socialism? The little prick's on a government disability!

 

10) PROTIP: You've worked really hard to win the coveted award of Green Company of the Year from Forbes Magazine, so don't screw it up by killing birds en masse!

 

 

Evolution Inaction

If you are concerned about the current debate over healthcare reform, you should be:

Frankly, what is surfacing is a survival of the fittest mentality. One demographic, being pitted against another, risks any true reform of the system and compromises the pursuit of good health for all.

One group in particular, unconvinced that change will not be destabilizing, has been the senior citizen population. Whether cautiously reluctant or downright suspect, seniors, many of whom are satisfied with Medicare, do not want to be scapegoated in the process to redress health-care grievances. At the crux, is the perceived threat that health care will be rationed for the elderly at the expense of insuring younger, healthier Americans. Seniors are not "on the chopping block," but propaganda and rhetoric would have you believe their interests will be disposed of readily.

What is true, however, is that there is already rationing in the America health care system. Insurance companies are able to differentiate which treatments are covered versus those deemed unnecessary. We, in the public, find this mediation palatable, but we question whether the government will interfere arbitrarily in our medical affairs.

Dr. Pernell goes on to point out what I pointed out yesterday: Healthcare reform can ONLY drive down the cost of healthcare, freeing more money for more treatment.

 

But her trope of "survival of the fittest" is intriguing and got me to thinking: what if the living room gibbons that have infested the Congressional town hall meetings win? What will happen to healthcare reform in this country?

 

It won't, frankly. We'll get the same lip service crap that President Bush offered up with Medicare prescription "reform" which turned out to be a boon for insurers and a muddle, ugly mess for consumers. And it will be decades again until someone straps on some cojones and decides to take the plunge into reforming a disastrous health insurance scam that private insurers have foisted on this nation.

 

We spend more, far more, per person on healthcare than any other nation on the planet, yet we rank in the 30s in life expectancy, have higher cancer and heart disease death rates than any country with "socialized" medicine, and have an infant mortality rate higher than many Third World nations (including Cuba)

 

So much for the "right-to-life," huh?

 

One bright spot in the whole town hall astroturfing is that we see now citizens who are on a government-provided healthcare plan are so satisfied with it that they will fight tooth and nail to keep it intact.

 

"I got mines, Joe, and I ain't giving it up!" A clever President and Congress would use this as an opening.

 

Getting AARP on board would be a big first step. They have reluctantly and half-heartedly endorsed some of the proposals bandied about. Even if they took the next logical step and just made a push to get people to realize this is not going to cut their Medicare, that would be a big help. People look at AARP and have respect for it as an organization devoted to the needs of the aging. I myself am a member, primarily because of that image.

 

We liberals have to begin to make the case that the Obama administration has been unable to: healthcare reform will save and prolong lives, and not force the elderly into euthanasia.

 

 

Morons Amaze Me

Ask people their opinions on tax cuts, and many of them will give you the free market rant that letting me spend my money will help the economy.

 

Ask people their opinions with respect to healthcare reforms, and many of these same people suddenly forget about market dynamics:

Since his days on the campaign trail, Obama has promised the public that those who like their health insurance plans won't have to give them up, but he's stopped short of saying at what cost.

"I think that's the fear," said Diana Owen, an associate professor of political science and the director of American studies at Georgetown University. "Even though they are going to keep the plan, the plan is going to be at a much greater cost. And he's not been able to really allay that fear."

The themes coming up at town hall meetings across the country are broadly the same as doubts expressed during the campaign. Critics are voicing fears about socialism and the dismantling of the government they are used to. And those who have sufficient health care coverage worry they'll have to foot the bill for reform, echoing concerns heard during the presidential campaign that Obama would "spread the wealth around."

Utter rubbish, as even a moment's thought will evidence.

 

Right now, healthcare costs, particularly health insurance premiums, are rocketing skyward with no ceiling in sight. There are plenty of reasons for this (not least of which is too many doctors are underpaid by HMOs and are forced to identify profit centers in treating patients and requiring extraneous tests) and that could be the subject of a book.

 

Among the myriad reasons are two key elements to lowering costs: insuring a larger pool of healthier patients, and free market competition.

 

The larger pool of uninsured but healthy people can be found in twenty- and even thirty-somethings who delay picking up health insurance because they have not worked through that they are not immortal yet. By including them in the overall pool of insured, this will lower the relative risk an insurer takes in issuing policies to a particular person: that insurer is not inclined to make rapacious profits off the backs of middle-class families. In addition, many of the young who will be insuring under reform will already have banked a fair amount of equity in their policies that will generate income to offset the higher costs they will incur later.

 

Government insisting on mandatory participation in health insurance will do that.

 

Number two, free market competition.

 

Why is it that Wal-Mart's presence in a given market actually drives prices down?

 

Simple. Because it can order in such large volumes, this forces manufacturers to cut prices to a bare minimum profit. Since the law requires that, if I offer price X to Wal-Mart, I have to offer price X to you, this dynamic naturally brings down the price of the product.

 

Now let's look at government healthcare. Medicare has already provided a small obstacle to willy-nilly price inflation on the part of medical companies, big pharma and insurers, because it can negotiate on behalf of the millions of its insured, with the guarantee of government's backing on any deals made.

 

But it's not been enough. A larger pool of healthier individuals is needed and necessary in order to truly harness the increases of the future. Government plans provide that pool with mandatory insurance, much of which will go to those healthy people not currently insured.

 

Thus creating a single entity with the power to negotiate price declines, just like Wal-Mart does.

Town Bawls

Never underestimate the power of the volume of the thunderingly stupid.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is switching his message on his overhaul of the nation's health care system, readying a fresh pitch designed for those who already have insurance.

The White House is retooling its message amid polling that shows Americans — especially those who already have coverage — skeptical of the Democratic proposals to expand coverage to millions. Instead, Obama will use a potentially boisterous town hall-style meeting in New Hampshire to highlight how his proposals would affect workers whose employers provide their health insurance.

The shift also is a potential blueprint for lawmakers' August recess. Critics of the president's plan have grabbed headlines by disrupting town hall meetings, and the White House expects that Tuesday's event may be bumpy.

Frankly, I do not, but here's a highlight of the difference between the Bush empire and the Barack Obama republic: the seats were largely chosen by lottery, not party loyalty. Events are not staged and that means there will be people who play along and people who will be antagonistic.

 

Barack Obama can handle both, of course.

 

The larger reason I do not believe there will be major disruptions to the President's meeting is it would detract from the message of those who oppose healthcare. They frame it as preventing socialism. We frame it as a necessary feature of any democratic society.

 

The arguments for and against healthcare reform could not be starker, and the President and Congress have taken on a large task here and a big opponent: Big Medicine.

 

The most effective argument in Obama's arsenal right now is the clear message that there will be no forced switches of insurance plans, that there are no "death panels" (an odious and disgusting trope trotted out by the bloodthirsty fascists of the Palin Party), rebutted beautifully at that link provided by Southern Beale, and that this will actually save the US taxpayer money in the longer run.

 

It's an investment in our future.

 

The death panels meme, while offensive and outrageous and the type of tactic Joseph Goebbels would be proud of, seem to have taken on some resonance if you believe the mass media coverage of previous town halls held by Congresscritters. That theme shows up everywhere and it's clear that Congresscritters were not briefed in advance.

 

Had it been me talking, I would have said the following: "That is the single most absurd statement that I have ever heard in my entire life, and your teachers from kindergarten on up ought to cringe to think that you could so badly misunderstand the English language. The 'panels' of which you speak provide end-of-life counseling to help elderly patients and their families cope with the inevitable. Would you deny your grandmother a priest to talk with as she faces meeting her Maker?"

 

Which would shut him up and the rest of the pieholes who tried to throw that at me later.

 

And then, for good measure, I would add this, quoted from the Southern Beale link:

You have no idea what it's like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you've never met before and be told that your mother's insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to "make some decisions," like whether your mother should be released "HTD" which is hospital parlance for "home to die," or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

 

If this isn't a "death panel" I don't know what is.

Insurance companies exist to make money off your death. Period. And that's the theme that Barack Obama needs to throw back at the unruly unwashed masses of the hateful and deceitful charlatans.

 

And this is exactly why, barring a madman on the waters, I believe the right wing astroturf organzations have worked tirelessly to ensure today's town hall does not become a madhouse. Barack Obama is a gifted debater and very good at confronting without being impolite. To give him a forum to be stern, to be Presidential, will create a blowback thus negating the very arguments the right wing wants to make.

 

The spectacle of such an unruly mob harassing the President over an issue nearly every American (80% or so) agrees need to be fixed when he's making an honest effort to do so will create an awful lot of sympathy and could create support for a plan that people on the right and left believe is flawed.

There will be debate, to be sure, but to disrespect the President of the United States will be seen as a signal that mob rule is imminent, and as with the student unrest in the 60s, will not be taken lightly. A polarization of this country at this time would be the wrong thing to do, and it would send a signal to the moderates of the nation that the right wing can be ignored.

 

So, while I do not think it will happen, I am praying for it.

The Trouble With Viruses...

...is they don't take summer vacations.

As the first influenza pandemic in 41 years has spread during the Southern Hemisphere's winter over the past few months, the United States and other northern countries have been racing to prepare for a second wave of swine flu virus.

At the same time, international health authorities have become increasingly alarmed about the new virus's arrival in the poorest, least-prepared parts of the world.

They travel a lot, to be sure, but they never take vacations!

 

That last bit is the scariest part of this latest warning. The poor, even in this country, have terrible access to medical care, and of course, that leaves the poor as a perfect incubator for this virus as well as any mutations that might occur. This will make the virus that much harder to eradicate or at least contain.

 

Already, strains of the virus are showing up that are resistant to Tamiflu, one of two recognized flu fighters on the market. Too, isolation and quarantine in poor populations is harder, as people have to work merely to survive and will work until they drop dead.

 

Certainly, northern hemisphere governments have had plenty of warning and opportunity to set up for this winter's return and those preparations may turn out to have been overkill, although I doubt it. The virulence of this particular bug seems to be undoubted and we've already seen some extreme measures were needed last winter to contain it as best as we could.

 

One bright spot in all this nervous-making anxiety is this flu might be the final key in unlocking true healthcare reform, albeit at a tragic and hefty price.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) America has just gotten wiser.

 

2) All you zombies hide your wallets.

 

3) This is good news for John McCain's campaign.

 

4) This is also good news for John McCain's campaign.

 

5) Denial can be a very sad thing. It's not like the medical examiner has an axe to grind with a woman who lives hundreds of miles away.

 

6) Do you remember how the nation banded together to help and support one another on September 12, 2001? Yea. Me neither.

 

7) I concur. The Bush and Obama teams could have made Herbert Hoover look like a genius if nothing had been done.

 

8) Political instability in the Republic of Georgia brought down Twitter, Facebook and nearly took down Google yesterday. I repeat: Twitter is for twits.

 

9) Only in Israel do you have a head on collision with a horse...AND LOSE!

 

10) Talk about "getting up on the wrong side of the bed"...

The Big Dawg!

Long time readers of this blog, and friends of Actor212, know that I am in the tank for former President Bill "Greatest. President. Ever." Clinton.

 

So it should come as no surprise that today's column will be about The Big Dog.

You'd need to have a heart of stone not to be moved by the sight of Laura Ling and Euna Lee coming off that plane yesterday.

During those moments, as the two journalists embraced their families for the first time in nearly five months, questions about diplomacy and politics seemed to vanish. They were two human beings, caught at the wrong time in the wrong place, spared 12 years of hard labor and back on their native soil. Laura Ling's choked-up words of gratitude just added to the drama.

Clinton was asked in by his former Vice President (and former friend, apparently) and Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore, the employer of the two captured and convicted journalists. This was in an unofficial capacity, to be sure, although one suspects that a former President and husband of the current Secretary of State would not lightly be sent into enemy territory without a full briefing by the White House and State Department, as well as a shopping list to present to Kim Jong Il.

 

So we'll call it a happy accident of circumstance and individual. If anyone could bring North Korea to the table, it had to be Bill Clinton.

 

It's been interesting over the past thirty years to see how ex-Presidents handle themselves in private life. Clinton (and now Obama) is a relatively young man and has one would hope a long retirement to assist the nation he lifted out of economic depression and turmoil-- apart from his own character flaws, of course. He's committed to his foundation, which is trying to bring smart solutions to intractable problems like malaria and hunger.

 

Jimmy Carter, of course, has his Habitat for Humanity, building homes for the poor, bringing onwership and a sense of community to people without hope and with despair.

 

Even George HW Bush has been committed to foreign policy solutions and to being a globe trotting goodwill ambassador for American interests and enterprise. No, not precisely a giving cause, but it promotes some of the good qualities America has: a can-do attitude, a willingness to step in and grab an opportunity to fix things.

 

Ronald Reagan rode a horse. George W Bush bought an apartment in Houston.

 

And now Bill Clinton is saving Americans. Whoda thunk?

 

It was done without threats, without sabre-rattling, without hectoring from the White House. It was done sotto voce, respecting that even a knuckleheaded moron like Kim deserves to be treated as the head of a sovereign nation, no matter how despicable we may perceive him or how much we would like to remove him from office.

 

Clinton, former President of the United States and ex-officio member of the State Department inner circle, apologized, or so it has been reported by the North Korean press agencies (the government, basically).

 

The diplomatic signals the trip sent-- for example, he was greeted at Pyongyang airport by North Korea's top negotiator on its nuclear program-- are intriguing and this mission does give the North a propaganda victory, to be sure. And an "apology" by a former President, however couched in vague generalizations and as subject to multiple interpretations as it may have been, is a small humiliation for a superpower.  

 

After all, if you were held in a hostile nation whether you earned it or not, you'd want to know that your government isn't worried about saving face in its efforts to return you safely, and given the eight years we've spent calling this nation "evil" and Satanic and who knows what else, however true it was, we sort of deserved to have the chip on our shoulders knocked off.

 

I think the way this will play out is a good one for America, for Barack Obama and for the Clintons. After all, who hasn't seen the video of Laura Ling talking about her reaction when she saw Bill Clinton standing there in the room where she was told of the release? Who hasn't imagined, even briefly, that powerful feeling that Clinton appeared as Superman, rescuing her?

 

And I think it signals a willingness on the part of the Obama administration to continue the Clinton doctrine of engagement, but not appeasement, which worked so well in Iraq, and Iran (where we actually saw moderate presidents elected!), and even in Korea, where we saw actual progress towards a working agreement on nukes, albeit one that Kim tested regularly.

 

Which is a good thing.

Wow. Really?

This is a rather startling survey:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Americans appear split over President Barack Obama's health care proposals, according to a new national poll.

Fifty percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday morning say they support the president's plans, with 45 percent opposed.

The results indicate a generational divide.

"Obama's plan is most popular among younger Americans and least popular among senior citizens," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "A majority of Americans over the age of 50 oppose Obama's plan; a majority of those under 50 support it."

And the children shall lead them.

 

Instinctively, I would have expected the opposite. After all, a big portion of the population of un- and underinsured Americans is comprised of young adults who, in their arrogance of assumed immortality, simply decline health insurance since it would crimp their disposable income better utilized for drinking, smoking and driving fast on the highways.

 

And people over 50, like me, would be more inclined to want some form of relief from the burden of ever-increasing premiums to cover an ever shrinking pool of participants. Single payer or at least national health care reform seems to me to fit that bill nicely, if nowhere near perfectly.

 

There is a bright spot to the survey, one that bodes well for healthcare reform:

The poll indicates that only three in 10 of all Americans think the president's health care proposals will help their families. Another 44 percent feel they won't benefit but that other families will be helped by the president's plans, and one in five say no one will be helped.

So roughly 80% of Americans feel that the reform would assist someone who needs it, which means that the vast majority of Americans feel healthcare in this nation is out of whack.

 

Good. That's a good sign and it bodes better for the future that younger people are taking such a practical and pragmatic view about what a government owes its people.

Choices And Decisions

This is another of those wool-gathering thought pieces that I am compelled to write from time to time to straighten my own head out a little. Please forgive the indulgence.

 

We are, it is said, defined by our choices. But what are choices? Are they goals? Are they actions? Are they thoughts? Are they half-measures, items of convenience?

 

It's hard to say. One can spend a lot of time thinking about something, but never come to a choice about it. On the other hand, one can leap into action and make a choice. On the other other hand, one can make bad choices impetuously and leap into action. On the other other hand, one can deliberate for weeks and see an opportunity lost.

 

See what I do there? Where is my choice in that paragraph?

 

And I think that's the point behind choices. You can't think your way to what you want. You have to act. On the other hand, no one is more capable of deluding you than yourself. So how do you know when to act on a choice and when not to?

 

I think it comes down to this: you act upon those things you love. Sometimes that means setting priorities. If I love writing more than I love bike riding, then I will probably write rather than ride if I am confronted with that choice. And if my friend whom I love needs to talk with me, well, then I put the pen down and the bike away and talk, rather than edit or pedal.

 

After all, the book might make me rich, the bike might make me healthy, but ultimately, that person's friendship is more rewarding and if they choose to reflect that friendship and love, then it will have been worthwhile.

When one has a full life, one must make sacrifices. There are only so many hours in a day, so many weeks in a year, so many years left in life. You can't have your cake and eat it too, you can't make plans without shutting the door on other choices and opportunities.

 

Actions define choices. You can regret your choices, you can think about other choices, but bottom line is, you take action on those choices you deem most important, which means the other choices are unimportant.

 

Period. One must commit to one's choices fully, despite the regrets or reservations one has about them or lost opportunities.

 

And this, I think, is why the saying is we are defined by our choices, because it is those things we act upon where we reveal what our true feelings are.

Plagues And Pestilence

Well, when you weren't looking, yet another nasty bug pops up on the radar...

BEIJING — Officials have sealed off an isolated town of 10,000 people in rural west-central China after an outbreak of pneumonic plague killed two residents, the state-run Xinhua news service reported on Monday.

An official who answered the emergency line at Renmin Hospital in Ziketan, where the outbreak is centered, said that all roads into and out of the area had been closed off, but that residents remained free to move about within the town. The official, who refused to give his name, said it was unclear when the blockade would be lifted. Repeated calls to a plague emergency phone line produced only busy signals.

Pneumonc plague is airborne, as opposed to its cousin, the bubonic plague, which is transferred by flea bites. It usually occurs in rural areas (the US has about 15 cases a year) where bacteria forms in the dung of livestock and then is aerosolized in some fashion. Without the proper treatment, antibiotics within 24 hours of symptoms appearing, the disease is nearly 100% fatal.

 

So now we're tracking swine flu, avian flu, the plague and in addition to all these, there's a new form of HIV floating around, which will upend current scientific assumptions:

Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been identified in an African woman and researchers say it appears to be the first to be transmitted to humans from gorillas instead of chimpanzees.

The 62-year-old woman infected with the new strain of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, comes from the West African nation of Cameroon and now lives in Paris. She has no symptoms of AIDS, according to today's report in the journal Nature from researchers at the University of Rouen in France.

The new strain, known as HIV-1, group P, is different enough from three previously identified strains that it can't be detected by conventional laboratory tests, said Paul Sharp, a geneticist who studies AIDS at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The new form of the virus is unlikely to spread to large numbers of people, he said.

Sharp goes onto say that he doesn't believe this strain will be widespread or highly infectious. Then again, in the early 1980s, scientists thought AIDS was some "gay plague" limited only to unprotected sex.

 

When even keeping your hands clean can promote getting sick, you know things are a bit scary.

 

 

Nobody Asked Me, But...

SPECIAL WHINY CONSERVATIVE EDITION

 

1) You can almost hear the conservatives chuckling to themselves "Heh, Indeed". So let me get this straight, asshole: a program that was funded for three months runs out of money in just a week (a program that conservatives basically went nuts over), attesting to the wild popularity of the program, and you folks somehow think this is a failure? I think it's a testament to the fact that, deep down, Americans want to do better: they want better cars, they want to be environmentally responsible, and they want to help the economy.

They get it, you don't. Now shut up.

 

2) A President you reall can have a beer with! 

 

Of course, conservatives made up shit about what beers were drunk. Not so much, however. Turns out, only the Presidents had an imported beer, a Bud Light (now owned by a Belgian company). Biden had a non-alcoholic Buckler (by Heineken...designated driver?), Crowley a Blue Moon (division of Adolph Coors (BEEGSHMILE!) company, but believe it or not, also an import now), and Gates had a Boston-based Sam Adams, the only American light beer to be awarded a gold medal at a German beer competition that had no light beer category. And of course, the only frikkin' American beer served at the summit!

 

But let's face facts: non-alcoholic American beers are piss-poor quality, and Bud is so American it would be hard to ignore the company.

 

3) Healthcare "reform" is inching forward.

 

Conservatives point to the "cash for clunkers" program and mock Congressional reform of healthcare. I'm not getting this. Has there suddenly been an uprising of senior citizens outraged over the massive bureaucracy and governmental interference in Medicare?

 

4) Conservatives have mocked the rise in unemployment as the only economic news that counts. It's not. unemployment lags the economy by about six to eight months. Blame Bush.

 

5) "We promise to try not to kill people" Maybe the neo-cons should have taken the same oath.

 

6) Conservatives cannibalize conservatives.

 

7) Apparently, Google is NOT omniscient.

 

8) There's a trope among conservatives with regards to allowing people to sell their organs (this came up in light of Steve Jobs recent liver transplant). This is why it is a bad idea.

 

9) I'd sure go to the beach more often!

 

10) One final jab at conservatives.

 

10)

Flu WHO?

I'm a little surprised at the muted, if any, outrage from the right about this:

A complicated list of who should get pandemic flu vaccine in the fall is now set. When the vaccine starts arriving in September, first in line will be pregnant women; the caretakers of infants; children and young adults; older people with chronic illness; and health-care workers.

That's the advice of a 15-member committee of experts, which met all day Wednesday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to advise the federal government on vaccine policy.

The priority list names targeted groups and suggests the order in which they should be vaccinated. While acknowledging the potential for confusion, the committee chose the strategy because of the possibility that the epidemic will be peaking within four to six weeks of when the vaccine becomes available.

This crisis has the confluence of a no-win situation for the Obama team, which is why I was certain this would be a softball for the right wing nutbags to tackle.

 

Think about it: An insufficient vaccine availability (Obama's Katrina) forces the government to ration health care (socialized medicine) which favors the poor, the ill, and women (welfare) over a crisis that hasn't begun to truly impact the United States (UN domination of US sovereignty) so why are we spending so much time and money and exerting such energy over a non-existent crisis (global climate change)?

 

I mean, damn, throw a birth certificate angle in there, and you have a feast for Republizombies!

 

There have been a million swine flu cases already diagnosed in the United States with just over 300 deaths reported and it's still the summer and far from flu season. The production schedule for vaccines has about 40 million doses being delivered in September, 80 million more in October, with another 80 million by the end of the year.

 

Argentina reports 100,000 cases in the middle of their winter, with at least 50 confirmed deaths. Argentina's population is roughly 1/8 the size of America's, so you do the math.

 

In other words, in the middle of our summer, hardly flu season, we've paced the outbreak of one of the worst outbreaks in the Southern Hemisphere winter. And that's after Argentina all but shut down for a week: businesses closed, travel was discouraged, and people were encouraged to remain at home.

 

Quarantine, in other words.

 

Once schools reopen in the fall, we can expect a tremendous spike in the number of cases, and we clearly will not have enough vaccine to get to school kids right away, particularly as this strain of flu seems to hit young people much harder than people over 18 (24 is the priority age for the vaccine, to inoculate college students).

 

 

World's Dumbest OpEd

And considering it's published in the Wall Street Journal, that's a mighty large field to beat out! Meet Thomas Franks...

The essential point about Gates-gate, or the tempest over last week's arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., is this: Most liberal commentary on the subject has taken race as its theme. Conservative commentators, by contrast, have furiously hit the class button.

Liberals, by and large, immediately plugged the event into their unfair-racial-profiling template, and proceeded to call for blacks and whites to "listen to each other's narratives" and other such anodyne niceties even after it started to seem that police racism was probably not what caused the incident.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were following their own "narrative," the one in which racism is often exaggerated and the real victim is the unassuming common man scorned by the deference-demanding "liberal elite." Commentators on the right zeroed in on the fact that Mr. Gates is an "Ivy League big shot," a "limousine liberal," and a star professor at Harvard, an institution they regard with special loathing. They pointed out that Mr. Gates allegedly addressed the cop with that deathless snob phrase, "you don't know who you're messing with"; they reminded us that Cambridge, Mass., is home to a particularly obnoxious combination of left-wing orthodoxy and upper-class entitlement; and they boiled over Mr. Gates's demand that the officer "beg my forgiveness."

OK, so far, that's not a bad assessment of the situation. Although I might quibble with the terms "most," certainly the loudest and most public voices have focused on those two issues. And now, for the brain fart:

Conservatives won this round in the culture wars, not merely because most of the facts broke their way, but because their grievance is one that a certain species of liberal never seems to grasp. Whether the issue is abortion, evolution or recycling, these liberal patricians are forever astonished to discover that the professions and institutions and attitudes that they revere are seen by others as arrogance and affectation.

The, uh, facts broke their way? Honeychild, the facts most certainly broke against the arresting officer and one wonders exactly why the conservatives in this country, the alleged bastion of individual rights and freedoms, aren't taking up Gates' cause.

After all, if he had been arrested for brandishing a weapon at a police invasion of his premises and assault on both his private property and his person, it would be Ruby Ridge all over again!

Oh. Wait. Randy Weaver was white. It's different for white people shooting at Federal agents. I forgot.

The facts, Mr. Frank, are that the originating 911 call made no mention of the suspect's race, except when prompted and even then, Gates or his driver were misidentified as possibly "Hispanic" (direct quote).

And yet, somehow, "two black men (were reported)" appeared in the initial police report. This, despite the firm denial by the complainant (Lucia Whalen) that she ever mentioned the race of anyone.

Those are the facts. Furthermore, since when has insulting anyone....in other words, exercising your First Amendment right to be a jerk...been an arrestable offense? Detestable, perhaps. But it is not an arrestable offense for anyone, standing on their own property, to call a cop names.

After all, one would think they've heard a lot worse from traffic violators, yet county and town jails all across this nation are studiously empty of boneheads with quick tempers, mouthing off to the cop who stopped them for a taillight violation.

But wait! There's more from Mr. Franks!

The "elitism" narrative routinely blind-sides them, takes them by surprise again and again. There they are, feeling good about their solidarity with the coffee-growers of Guatemala, and then they find themselves on the receiving end of criticism from, say, the plumbers of Ohio.

Elitism, in this case, meaning a man who teaches at Harvard University is not entitled to the same basic Constitutional protections that, say, a limousine-riding Ph.D. columnist for the Wall Street Journal is. Especially if said teacher is uppity and black. But I digress.

But then again, limousine-riding Ph. D. columnists for the Wall Street Journal would hardly deign to share a beer with anyone, much less the house Negro at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, would they? Or is he just jealous that The Man is keeping a white man down?

UPDATE: Harvey Silvergate continues the discussion of the Constitutionality of Gates' arrest.

Sgt. Crowley had every right to check on what was reported as a possible break and entry. But as soon as he realized that the occupant was entitled to be in the house, he should have left. He admits in his own police report that he was indeed able to ascertain Professor Gates' residency and hence right to be in the house.

As for Professor Gates' inquiries into the officer's identity and badge number (as Gates describes the confrontation) or his tirade against the officer (as Crowley reports), the citizen was merely--even if neither kindly nor wisely--exercising his constitutional right when faced with official power. Even if Professor Gates were wearing a "Fuck You, Cambridge Police" jacket, the officer would have been obligated to leave the house without its occupant in handcuffs.

No, No, NO!

Just when you think we might actually make progress on national healthcare reform...

[Senator Max] Baucus [D-Stupidtown] says his group will produce the bill that best meets Mr. Obama's top priorities, broadly expanding coverage to the uninsured and curtailing the steep rise in health care spending over the long term, what policy makers call "bending the cost curve."

Still, if the three Democrats and three Republicans can pull off a grand bargain, it will have to be more conservative than the measures proposed by the House or the left-leaning Senate health committee. And that could force Mr. Obama to choose between backing the bipartisan deal or rank-and-file Democrats who want a bill that more closely reflects their liberal ideals.

Already, the group of six has tossed aside the idea of a government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers, which the president supports but Republicans said was a deal-breaker.

Instead, they are proposing a network of private, nonprofit cooperatives.

They have also dismissed the House Democratic plan to pay for the bill's roughly $1 trillion, 10-year cost partly with an income surtax on high earners.

The three Republicans have insisted that any new taxes come from within the health care arena. As one option, Democrats have proposed taxing high-end insurance plans with values exceeding $25,000.

The Senate group also seems prepared to drop a requirement, included in other versions of the legislation, that employers offer coverage to their workers. "We don't mandate employer coverage," Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and one of the six, said Monday. Employers that do not offer coverage may instead have to pay the cost of any government subsidies for which their workers qualify. In the House, centrist Democrats have temporarily stalled the health care bill, many lawmakers want to see what Mr. Baucus's group produces before voting on tax increases in the House bill.

What's the point in gutting our current system if we're only going to replace it with a NEW AND IMPROVED FAILED SYSTEM!!!

 

What's the point in reforming healthcare if the reform basically involves putting the foxes in charge of the hen house and letting the wolves walk away scot free?

 

Look, I understand that things in this country have to be done in small steps, like turning a battleship around in a harbor, but this is not even a step forward so much as a move to the side! Meanwhile, millions of Americans will die this year because of inadequate heatlh insurance, bad medical treatments because of bad insurance policies, and inadequate attention to preventative measures that could significantly improve not only the longevity of Americans, but the quality of that life, allowing us a more productive citizenry to help move this country forward.

 

This is LUDICROUS!

 

Bad News, Worse News

An interesting study was released by the University of Hawaii overnight:

Atmospheric carbon increased 70 percent during the period known as Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago, said Richard Zeebe. Yet it was less than expected to explain a rapid increase in temperatures, he said in an interview.

"This constitutes an enigma because carbon dioxide released cannot account for the entire warming. This means something else contributed significantly to the warming," he said.

"We're not saying carbon dioxide is not important," he emphasized. "It is very important. Current and future warming is almost entirely due to carbon emissions. There is no doubt about this."

The right wing will probably crow loudly about this, in their Crow Magnon style, but this is even worse than anticipated.

 

See, if global climate change correlates with an increase in temperature, and that increase in temperature (which has been shown) is correlated with a rise in atmospheric carbon, then any fluctuation from that means that predictions going forward based on that mechanism are suspect.

 

Which might be good news IF temperatures had risen less with a rise in carbon than anticipated in history.

 

This study indicates something far more insidious, although you won't read about it in the news much. The implications of this story are the very real threat of a feedback loop that actually creates more warming than the levels of atmospheric carbon would dictate.

 

For example, it's very hard to measure atmospheric methane in ocean sediment cores-- carbon gets to the bottom of the ocean as unicelled organisms which process it in photosynthesis die and drop down-- but methane is even more of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This study showed that a 70% increase in atmospheric carbon created a 16 degree rise in global temperatures. This was a rise that would be predicted with a tripling of carbon dioxide levels.

 

Scientists predict now that CO2 levels will double this century. We're in for nasty weather, not just this century, but for milennia to come.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) This whole Henry Louis Gates thing up in Massachussetts is arguably the single biggest misdirection this year. Here you have a private citizen in the sanctity of his home, walking around with a cane, being arrested on suspicion of being a burglar...IN HIS OWN HOME!

Look, I like cops. I think they have the toughest job in the world, keeping assholes safe from being assholes and other assholes. But in this instance, they acted precipitously and yes, "stupidly," as our black President, who you know is probably the first in our nation's history to actually suffer police harassments, put it.

Forget the race. A 60-something man walking around a house with a cane is not a robber and the frikkin' cops simply blew the call. Period. End of story. That's the way I'd be reporting it if I was a journalist, and any news organization that is reporting it any differently "the man wasn't acting professional," "police departments nationwide are angry with Obama," is not doing their job.

Period.

2) If these guys were Islamic, how much of a hue and cry would be made? This would have moved from a crime story to a national security "crisis" in seconds.

3) I feel good about this. We need all the friends we can get.

4) I'd be happy if we can get out without embarrassing ourselves. The war we should have been fighting since September 11 seems to be slipping away from us.

5) For the first time in its history, Windows sales declined last quarter.

6) Lance Mannion has posted a very interesting comparison of the Harry Potter novels/movies to Star Wars.

7) "I feel the earth move under my butt." I'm a big fan of outdoor sex, but this would probably put the fear of Thor in me...

8) The inventor of WD-40 has died. World's smoothest burial follows.

9) Revenge....

10) ...Ironic blowback!

Maybe We Ought To Do Away With Marriage?

This is a bit of a woolgathering post, so if it comes off disjointed and rambling, please forgive me.

 

I mean, more than usual, of course.

 

It all started in Florida...

Fort Myers Beach town council voted 5-0 to fire Scott Janke "without cause" after Mayor Larry Kiker called an emergency meeting Tuesday night.

 

Kiker said he learned that afternoon that Janke's wife is an adult film star, and word quickly spread. The elected officials took the action a few hours later.

 

"At no time did we make a judgment call on the activities of Mr. Janke or his wife," Kiker told The Associated Press. "It's a matter of how effective he becomes after this situation. How much disruption there is."

Janke's wife is an actress in adult films who goes under the nym Jazella Moore, and who has starred in the MILF Hunter videos.

 Not my cup of tea, but not hideous or even that obvious a porn actress. This, by the way, was one of the cleaner images I could find of her.

 

So first it was gay marriage that would scare the living crap out of the community, and now it's marrying a porn actor(tress)? Here you have a town manager who was hired to fix problems in the town itself, being fired...for what? His choice of companionship?

 

By the mayor's own admission, Janke "violated no rules or laws and added that he had done a good job for the island town."

 

Huh?

 

A man who was brought in to reunite a town that had been divided over some issues related to its beach...its beach...now finds himself being assumed to be an object of division himself.

 

Look, if he had somehow leaked a videotape of he and his wife (or other person) in the act, and you want to fire him for that, at least that's a construct I can understand. He'd be humiliated and the butt (sorry) of jokes for the rest of his tenure, making his job a little harder to perform to his standards.

 

But to say that his wife is going to somehow affect his ability to negotiate with people or to enforce codes or whatever it is the manager does seems ludicrous. To say that marrying a porn star somehow tarnishes the image of a bikini-clad beach community runs close to the line of silliness.

 

If that's the case, then why not go house by house and look at the folks who live there. Got any porn stars living on the beach? Get rid of them. And the drug dealers. And the guy who's cat meows too loudly when it's in heat.

 

If, as Councilman Tom Babcock of the town states, you are held to a higher standard as a public official, can we assume then there is absolutely zero corruption in the town? Or is Mr Babcock receiving a few bucks under the table because he's looking the other way about underage drinking or perhaps a zoning variance? Maybe he needs to be vetted again, along with every other member of the Ft Myers Beach government.

 

Why is it that marriage to anyone is anyone else's business? If a marriage makes a man or woman happy and helps them to perform their jobs more effectively and makes them better citizens in the community, then by God, why not let the man (or woman) marry whomever the hell they want to and just shut up about it!

A Sign of Sanity

If you're in the middle of an economic crisis and your own people are hurting and there's no one on the horizon who has anything close to the military hardware you have, then you can afford to let upgrades die:

The Senate voted Tuesday to kill the nation's premier fighter jet program, embracing by a 58-40 margin the argument of President Obama and his top military advisers that the F-22 is no longer needed for the nation's defense and a costly drag on the Pentagon's budget in an era of small wars and growing counterinsurgency efforts.

[...] (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates had depicted the F-22, which was conceived in the 1980s, as a "silver bullet solution" to a high-technology aerial warfare threat that has not materialized. He said other warplanes will adequately defend the country for decades to come, and won support from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Air Force's two senior leaders. But his view was strongly opposed by others in the Air Force and by military contractors and unions that have benefited from the $65 billion program.

A hearty "Amen" to this!

 

Defense spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product is roughly 20% of the United States budgets in a typical year. I say "typical," because of the outlying domestic stimulus spending this year, which will dwarf defense spending (and watch the right-wing whackjobs now claim "it's such a small number!").

 

We nearly spend more each year on defense than every other nation on the planet. Combined. Re-read that and think about the implications.

 

Military power is closely aligned with spending, so that means that if we had to defend our soil against every other country on the planet, right down to Lichtenstein, San Marino and Palau, it would be a fair fight!

 

The war of the future as it stands right now will be fought using mobile and surgical tactics, smaller forces deployed in smaller areas targeting smaller objectives. That may change, but right now, there is no one on the horizon who can create such a widespread war as to justify the waste of money on a fighter of this caliber.

 

Except maybe, um, us. And we nearly did cause a war of that magnitude. The lessons of history will probably be written that America came closer to the brink of starting World War III in this generation than any nation ever did. if the start of World War I is any indication, it would not take much of a spark to light the powder keg that Bush in concert with Al Qaeda compiled.

 

And if history's course is any determinant, aggressors get theirs in the end, usually in swift and painful fashion. It would not have been pretty.

 

We should applaud Secretary Gates as well as the Senate for having the courage to not take us one step closer to annihilation, militarily as well as economically.

Matt Drudge: Fucking Moron

It's easy to see how Matt Drudge can be taken seriously as a "journalist," what with the cool fedora he's usually portrayed with. After all, clothes make the man, right? Things like integrity, hard work, fact checking, none of those have anything to do with reporting the news. It's all about the hat.

 Like, say, talking about how the government spent almost $2 million dollars to buy a couple of pounds of ham. Try to find the original article, and it's gone, but here's the precis:

The purchases for sliced ham and other contracts - including mozzarella and other cheeses - were to provide soup kitchens and homeless shelters with food for the needy.

And governmentese references to 2 pounds of frozen ham and other sizes was to the products' packaging, not the overall amount of food purchased.

In fact, the Agriculture Department purchased some 760,000 pounds of ham with that $1.19 million - a cost of about $1.50 a pound, Vilsack said.

Now, a real reporter would have picked up the phone, and called the USDA and asked, "Hey, you know, there's this line item in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that says you folks spent over a million bucks on two pounds of ham. Care to comment?"

 

A cursory look at Drudge's website on any random minute, like, say, now, reveals these headlines:

 

- UK: Man, 22, Dies After Liver Transplant Refused...

 

- CLAIM: Fish are shrinking in response to global warming...  (well, at least he acknowledges global warming is real)

 

- VIDEO: Congressman's town hall erupts over Obama birth certificate...

 

- iPhone application lets you find nearest pot dealer...

 

Now, I'd bet that of these four stories, one is flat out true (the claim about the fish actually having been made), one is an exaggeration of circumstances (the town hall eruption), one is a joke reported as straight fact (the pot app...altho it's going to be fun downloading that one!), and the last one is a flat out distortion of what is likely a true-but-mundane story, so badly distorted now that the memory of a tragic death will be tarnished forever by a bunch of know-nothing bloggers who believe that Drudge only ever tells the truth.

 

After all, he wouldn't print it if it wasn't true, to quote the Joe Jackson song.

 

To his credit, he not only published the refutation by the USDA, specifically by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, but highlighted it on his home page.

 

To his dishonor, he mocked it, acting as a child who points to a load of shit he's just taken under the stairs and saying "See? See, Mommy? Look what I made!"

 

This reprehensible piece of human filth, this scum who dares call himself a newsman, is a disgrace to anything that walks the face of the earth and calls itself a human being. His job, his life, is to destroy anyone who is better than him and that means everyone. And one day, he'll turn his guns on anyone, including those who suck at his teat now and feed him his dredge information.

 

And I'll applaud. They deserve each other.

Space: The Liberal Frontier

A curious nexus of events is occuring right now, coincidences abound.

 

Today marks, as you undoubtedly know, the 40th anniversary of the first moonwalk by Neil Armstrong.

 

It's hard to believe that it's been forty years. It's harder still to believe that the promise of those early space explorations has been strangled in the cradle by bureaucrats and people without dreams, pragmatists.

 

Less hard to believe is that Walter Cronkite, one of the voices of the American space program, has been stilled on the very threshold of this anniversary.

 

Cronkite reported on many tragic events in a turbulent American landscape at a time when change was something real, not a campaign slogan. Through it all, from assassinations to war to student unrest to politics, Cronkite kept his composure, at times when a lesser man would have broken down (and indeed, many did).

 

If you look closely at the time he reported on the death of John F. Kennedy, you can see him fight his tears back, because he knew his job was to tell us what happened, not to feel it.

 

In fact, the only time I can recall Cronkite being so overwhelmed by the news was on this date, 40 years ago, as man stepped out onto the surface of another celestial body for the first time.

 

Part of that, no doubt, was the monumental task involved and the effort America dedicated to it. Three astronauts died testing Apollo 1. Millions and millions of dollars were spent honing and refining technology. A nation that had come of age with the death of its youngest President, his brother and a man of peace, all at the hands of gun violence, was in desperate need of a spark and the shiny metal boxes of the space program provided welcome relief.

 

A nation cheered Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, less for their achievement than for the relief from our losses.

 

But I think a larger part is unspoken often when discussing what the moon landing meant to us. We were set upon the task by that youngest President, who saw the competition that the Soviet Union had laid down upon his table and rose to the challenge. We were scared not only of the world around us, but of ourselves. America revealed an uglier side with the use of the atomic bomb, no matter whether such use was justified or not and continuing right into a war of aggression that was probably pointless.

 

Cronkite's brain cramp, his "wow" moment, was undoubtedly largely influenced by all this: the tears he had been unwilling to shed that November day were exhaled on this July day.

 

There was a sense of completion that day, to be sure. The entire nation had been ramped up for the exploration of space for so long and as 1968 closed and we saw images of our earth from Apollo 8, at the end of a year of violence and unrest, it was almost as if the entire country stood still and clasped hands. We really were all in this together on this little blue marble.

 That image marked the pursuit of the moon in earnest. Hell, even SNOOPY was an astronaut!

 

The decade closed much as it had opened: with promise and hope and new beginnings. Sadly that promise was broken, the hope quashed and the new beginnings became "nothing in the street looks any different to me." History didn't change, at least not for the better. We ended up in the morass of self-righteousness and moral lecturing that we've seen these past forty years grown and morph this country from one that looked forward to one yearning to move backwards, past the moonwalk, past the assassinations, back to a time when men were men, women were silent, and minorities were at best ignored.

 

The promise of space is a promise of progressivism. The promise of space is liberalism writ large, on a cosmic scale. What we learned going to the moon, indeed the benefits we've accrued...it always makes me laugh to read a criticism about space exploration written on a computer using the very microchips that grew out of Apollo...have been massive, and I think we've only just begun to understand technology's promise from space.

 

We really have no choice, we humans. We must move forward. We must move outward. We must seek space.