Ruminations of a Junkie for Politics

Joe Paterno – Legal vs. Moral Responsibility

2011-11-10T06:36:00.000-08:00

They fired Joe Paterno last night. Not just him but the President of Penn State University as well but the firing of Joe Pa, the winningest coach in College Football history, is the one that is enerating all the controversy.

Joe’s defenders, and there are many, argue that he satisfied his legal responsibility by reporting the abuse committed by a former assistant as soon as he learned of it.

And they are probably right. He did what was required by law and then moved on.

But still he got fired.

You can argue, and I won’t disagree, that the trustees were operating from a need to protect the reputation of the University from bad publicity. You can hear that in their statement. Firing Joe Pa was good for the University because keeping him on would have let to lots of bad publicity.

What I didn’t hear from the Trustees or from Joe Pa or from anyone else I have seen quoted is a sense of shame on their part that they didn’t do more sooner. They might have expressed some remorse in hindsight that they didn’t do more but even the apology doesn’t seem to reflect any sense of shame at letting this occur and not reacting strongly.

The young man who saw a former coach abusing a boy in the shower did what he was required to do. He reported it to his superior, Joe Paterno. He didn’t walk into the shower and stop the
abuse. He didn’t call the cops. He didn’t try to protect the boy who was, at that moment, being abused right in front of him.

Did he fulfill his legal responsibility? Probably.

Did he in any way meet what has to be thought of as a moral responsibility? Not even close.

Did Joe Paterno, when he was told of the abuse that was at that moment happening in a facility under his control, do what he was legally required to do. Probably.

But what about his moral responsibility? There he failed completely.

And that same failure occurred time and again with everyone in the University who knew of the event.

Some of them didn’t even meet their legal responsibility. As some point somebody at the top, maybe Joe Pa, maybe his boss, but somebody, was required by law to call the police and report the crime. And they didn’t even do that.

But I think their moral failure is far greater than their legal one. These men knew that someone
with a long association with the University was abusing boys and they did nothing to stop it.

I wish I could say that I would reacted morally, and stopped the abuse if I saw it occurring. I hope I would. I think I would. But until I am actually standing somewhere seeing a some else committing an unspeakable act, until then I won’t know for sure how I will react. I know this
though. Should I fail to act, I know I will regret my moral failure.

So far I haven’t seen any hint that any of the people involved in this sordid mess feel that sense of same.

I think they should have fired the winningest coach in college football history. I just think they gave the wrong reason. And I don’t think they are learning the right lesson.

Who are the Republilcans - Part Duhh

2011-10-24T19:13:00.000-07:00

The devolution of the modern Republican party continues to amaze me.

There have been literally years of stupidity where the Birther fringe of the Republican party sacrificed all seriousness, where DONALD TRUMP rode the birther idiocy to a lead in the Republican polls before flaming out when the President released yet another document proving where he was born. After all that 23% of Republican voters still believe that President Obama is an undocumented alien.

23% of Republicans

That's not a fringe, that not out on the edge, that's a serious chunk of the Republican Party.

Is it any surprise that Herman Cain is the Republicans leading candidate for President of the United States?

Voter Fraud Alert!!!!!

2011-10-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

I missed this somehow, and I pay pretty close attention to what is going on. But apparently there has been massive and pervasive voter fraud happening in almost every state that has a Republican Majority in their Legislature. That must be it. Huge Voter Fraud scandal and I just missed it. I clearly need to pay better attention.

So now Republican legislatures across the nation are enacting laws designed to prevent this massive voter fraud by requiring that everyone who votes have a government issued ID card.

As with any attempt to prevent fraud, some amount of legitimate voting will have to be sacrificed. Young people, poor people, minorities, the elderly, people who live in cities, all these people who don't have cars and so don't have the most common form of government issued ID, Drivers Licenses, all those people can't vote unless they find their birth certificate and then go to some state office somewhere, often the DMV (and we all know how much fun a visit to the DMV is) to apply for a state issued ID card for which they have to pay around $20 depending on the state.

Now these good Republican legislators who clearly have the people's best interest at heart understand that some among us can't afford the cost of this new ID card so these benevolent legislators will allow you to have this new ID for free if you can prove to some other bureaucrats that you can't afford it. Of course if you minimum wage job doesn't allow you the time off to traipse from one government office to the next to prove that you are poor but still really you, then I guess you are just tooo much of a loser to be allowed to vote.

I would like someone to point me to the stories of voter fraud that I must have missed. I looked on The Google and couldn't find them, but I know they must be out there. Why else would so many Republicans want to make it so much harder for the poor and the young and minorities, and the elderly to vote. Surely these laws which have already prevented 10's or even hundreds of thousands of people from voting were made necessary by some massive voting fraud scandal. And that is something I would be interested in reading about!!

But then we all know that is not true.

There hasn't been any massive voter fraud.

And those incidences of fraud that did occur in our past wouldn't have been prevented by this law.

The problems is that the young and the poor and the elderly and minorities (who are often among the poor) have historically tended to vote Democratic. So if you want to reduce Democratic voter turnout then its easy to claim to be trying to prevent voter fraud and make it difficult or impossible for all these people who generally vote Democratic to vote. Republicans don't have to get as many of their voters out to the polls because they have used the law to prevent so many Democratic voters from being allowed to vote.

This is the modern Republican party. They make up this story that they are trying to prevent voter fraud as a cover for their real intent to suppress turnout by traditionally Democratic voting groups. They don't even really have to try to convince anyone since the seem to do this in states that have Republican majorities in the legislature and Republicans as Governors.

Talk about massive Voter Fraud!

Who are the Republicans?

2011-10-12T18:54:00.000-07:00

I must admit to not really understanding in many ways the Republican Party.

This is, after all, the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

It used to be that there were adults in the Republican party, people who understood that working together for the betterment of this country was more important than ideological purity or craven political gain.

I disagreed with Ronald Reagan on almost every issue. His policies of tax cuts and deregulation and spending more and more borrowed money on defense spending that dwarfs what is spend by our prospective adversaries exploded the deficit and gave us the Savings and Loan collapse that cost $500Billion to fix. And the legacy of his insane policies haunts us to this day with every Republican worshipping at the Altar of Reagan in California.

Ronald Reagan could not get nominated for County Commissioner by today's Republican party. He was too liberal, to willing to cooperate with Democrats to actually get things done. He recognized that he had to raise taxes to reign in the explosion in the deficit that his own policies had created.

As a Republican candidate in today's America, he would be less likely to get nominated than Buddy Roemer.

Today's Republican Party has abandoned everything that Reagan stood for. Reagan compromised about taxes and actually raised taxes 6 times. He supported immigration reform granting amnesty to millions of undocumented aliens. As governor he signed the most liberal abortion in the land years before Roe vs. Wade. He would actually cooperate with Tip O'Neil, the Democratic Speaker of the House. Today's Republicans insist that the only way to reduce the deficit is by cutting everything except defense spending. They insist that those they disagree with must be Communists or Socialists or Hate America.

They think that attacking President Obama for anything and everything that he does somehow constitutes a policy. Even when he does the things they earlier encouraged him to do. In one of the first Republican Presidential Debates EVERY one of the candidates agreed that they would reject a deal to reduce the deficit that was 90% spending cuts and only 10% tax increases. Their rigidity is their hallmark. They were willing to literally let the country default on its obligations in their monomaniacal insistence on reducing the deficit exclusively through spending cuts. They talk allot about how bad the economy is yet block every attempt by this President to actually spur the economy. Republicans originally proposed a deficit commission and then turned against it when President Obama embraced it. Obamacare, with it's individual mandate, strongly resembles the mandatory health insurance program passed in Massachusetts by then Governor Romney. Now that same Romney promises to repeal Obamacare as one of his first acts in office if elected President.

Look at the current leading candidates for the Republican nomination.

Mitt Romney is widely thought of in the media as the adult in the room. This is the same man who has changed every major position in his political life since his time as governor. This same man who claimed that his actually residence for voting purposes was in the basement of his son's house. And this is the adult in this group of dwarfs.

And next we have Herman Cain. This mental giant has actually proposed doing something instead of just promising to repeal everything that President Obama has done. But his 999 proposal for tax reform would increase taxes on the poor and cut taxed on the wealthy and would increase the deficit since it wouldn't bring in as much money as the current system does. And we asked how is program would actually work in detail, he literally said he had no idea. IT'S HIS IDEA. You would think that he might want to have an idea bout how his idea would work.

Next we have Mr Texas Economic Miracle himself, the Governor of the big state of Texas, Rick Perry. This mangles the language more then even his predecessor in Austin, George Bush, did. It doesn't appear that he is that much brighter than Shrub either. But he does like executing people. And his record for executions is apparently a great applause line in Republican Debates. He wants us all to follow Texas's example by failing our schools, creating more minimum wage jobs than anyone else, and Praying for rain while denying the realities of Global Warming. To his credit he actually seems to have a heart sometimes. He supports for Texas' version of the Dream Act and the HPV vaccination program which will literally save thousands or even millions of lives. Of course those policies are the least popular parts of his platform among the Republican faithful.

Michelle Bachman had her brief moment in the sun, but quickly showed that she was even too nucking futs for even the Baggers she tried to appeal to. The threw here aside for Perry before trying to throw him aside for Christie and now threw them all aside for Cain.

And the rest aren't even a good side show.

Who are these people

Is this really the cream of the Republican Party?

Unfortunately I think it is. This really is the best of what is left in that once great and proud party.

And that's kind of a shame.

What have Conservatives done to make American Better

2011-10-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

I have asked this question before. Usually I don't get any response what so ever.

But to date, I haven't gotten one clear example of something Conservatives have done to make America Better?

Anybody?

Yeah Sure, the Mainstream Media is Liberal - Sure it is

2011-10-07T04:59:00.000-07:00

Its a consistent whine from conservatives across the land that the Mainstream Media has a liberal bias and is not and cannot be objective.

Like so much of what they say I don't know which of them really believes it and which of them just like the way it sounds, but they say it all the time.

But think about it if you can.

When the tea party erupted on to the scene (financed by the Koch brothers) the entier media treated it like it was some sort of grassroots uprising of patriotic (if a little quircky Americans) with legitimate greviences. You could get new crews to show up if you 15 or 20 baggers protesting on the Mall and the news would treat it like it was this huge thing.

Now you have Occupy Wall Street, where there are (depending on the day) hundreds to thousands of protesters in the Financial District in New York protesting against the disastorous role played by the big institutition represented there in crashing the economy.

For weeks the supposedly liberal Mainstream Media didn't cover it at all. Now they cover it with ridicule, highlighting the goofiest or least articulate of the protesters.

Where is the respect they gave the Baggers? Where is the acknowledgement that this really is a grass roots movement not an event sponsored by major corporations like the Tea Party?

I suspect most of you never heard about "The People's Budget" either. If the media is so liberal, then why don't they give more coverage to Liberal events or causes?

Like tax cuts that pay for themselves and the myth that giving tax breaks to corporations will spur hiring, the myth of the Liberal Media permeates conservative speak.

And like so much of what they say, its simply not true

Science and Global Warming

2011-10-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

In the eternal quasi debate about Climate Change the deniers keep coming back to a central tenet of their belief. Climate Scientists are somehow corrupt. They believe that all the Climate Scientists that have reached the conclusion that the current warming trend in global average surface temperature are involved in some sort of global conspiracy.

What the point of the conspiracy is I have never quite understood. Unless you just want to believe that Climate Scientists just like to lie for the sake of lying.

Then two recent stories about science caught my attention. In the first, a group of scientists in Europe were measuring the speed of neutrinos. And they discovered, to universal surprise, that the neutrinos actually traveled faster than the speed of light. That is, for the science community, shocking and amazing news. The absolute inability for any particle to exceed the speed of light has been one of the bedrock realities of science every since Einstein postulated his theories of Relativity and Special Relativity. The response in the scientific community was surprise and excitement. The work of these scientists will now be examined very closely by scientists around the world. Some will be trying to explain away the findings with some calculational or instrument error. Others will be trying to duplicate the findings, running experiments that duplicate the original experiment and designing different experiments to test the speed of neutrinos.

The second story came today in the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to an Israeli scientist who proved the existence of quasicrystals which are crystalline materials where the pattern of atoms in the crystal doesn't repeat. When this Israeli scientist first published his work it challenged fundamentally what chemists had taken as a given for a very long time. So other Chemists began testing the discovery, trying to duplicate the results or trying to refute them as flawed in some way.

This is what scientists do.

Hypothesis, Experiment, Analysis, Synthesis.
Repeat

The first scientist that I know of that theorized that human activity was causing the globe to get hotter faster was an American scientist back in the late 50's. I suspect that at that time his theories were not widely accepted. But scientists did what scientists do, they measured and analyzed and tested and observed and they came up with theories that described what they were observing and then they tried to figure out other ways to test their theories. Scientists would look for other theories that would better explain the data. By the early 90's, the scientists were convinced. Every published climate scientist agreed that human activity, most importantly the production of CO2, was taking an existing warming trend and accelerating it. Human activity became acknowledged as the principal driver in the warming that was occurring in global average surface temperatures.

There is no conspiracy here. When somebody stole thousands of emails from climate researchers in England they then published extracts and snippets of different emails that they claimed somehow proved that there was a vast global conspiracy among climatologists to lie to us all and to suppress dissenting views.

So there have been at least 5 investigations into these allegations of fraud. The University of East Anglia (where the scientists worked) investigated, the British government investigated a couple of state Attorney's General investigated. Every investigation came to the same basic conclusion.

There was no fraud, no academic malfeasance, no conspiracy to lie.

Its almost been funny to watch the deniers spin theory after theory. At first denying that the globe was actually warming, then claiming that volcanoes put far more CO2 into the atmosphere, or claiming that data more than about 50 years old was unreliable because those old thermometers weren't as accurate as ours are today, or something called Isotopic Drift invalidated the results of ice core surveys or that tree ring studies were just not meaningful for some reason or that where the thermometers were placed was flawed so that their readings were not sufficiently isolated from local conditions like urban heating.

And every theory gets dis proven.

The scientists who may have discovered neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light, and the scientist who discovered quasicrystals were doing what scientists to. Observing, Hypothesizing, Experimenting, and then refining the hypothesis. And then doing it again.

That's what climate scientists have been doing on the issue of global warming since at least the late 50's.

There is no fraud, there is no conspiracy, there is no big lie. At least not from the Climate Scientists.

BELIEVE what you want about Global Warming. Believe that its caused by aliens or solar cycles or volcano's or bad thermometers if you want. But when your BELIEFS are in direct contradiction of the conclusions of virtually every climate scientist, then perhaps you need to understand why you so desperately want to believe something that isn't true. Belief is in your heart. Belief is not what scientists do.

Observe, Theorize, Test and repeat. That's what scientists do. Don't believe them if you choose not to, but don't bother pretending that your BELIEFS are based on science. Just ask the real scientists.

The Real JOB CREATORS

2011-09-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

I’m Back!!
A friend of mine commented a few days ago that he hadn’t seen a new post here in a while and he even knew the date of my last post. I replied that I was discouraged the failures of my party to own any of the current debates. My pArty, and the supposedly liberal main stream media, are letting the idiots that dominate the Republican Party lie and lie and lie and even when they get corrected, the media doesn’t hold them to account for lying. This has been the dynamic in America’s politics since the election of Barack Obama. Lies about where he was born, lies about his faith and beliefs, lies about what he has said in his speeches, lies about the 2009 stimulus bill, lies about Obamacare, lies about whose policies created the huge deficits we face, lies about lies about global warming, lies about evolution, and then more lies. The list goes on and on.
One of their favorite lies goes something like, “We can’t raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans or on Corporations because they are the JOB CREATORS!!!!!”
God forbid that we do anything to inhibit Job Creation.
In 2010 Republicans across the country ran for election based on their attacks on the President for not fixing the economy and their promises to implement policies that would create jobs.
In other words they lied again.
They are pointing to the wrong people as the Job Creators! Major Corporations in this country are sitting on TRILLIONS of dollars on cash reserves and not hiring in this country. Small businesses have been given all sorts of tax incentives to hire and they are not hiring despite facing the lowest tax burden since the end of WWII. Why are the supposed JOB CREATORS not creating any jobs? Because they are not the JOB CREATORS!!!
You are
I am
Go to a mirror and look at yourself and tell yourself, “I am a JOB CREATOR!!”
Jobs don’t get created because we repeal regulations or lower taxes or worship at the feet of small businesses and big corporations, jobs get created when WE go out and create demand. When we start buying things, that will create demand and then the supposed JOB CREATORS will start hiring people to make or provide those things WE, the REAL JOB CREATORS, want.
Ever since the Bush Tax Cuts, we have been fawning over Corporations and Small Businesses as the JOB CREATORS and look at how well that has worked out for us. Even before the Great Recession, created by the greed of Big Corporations, job growth had been anemic, the middle class was getting it ass kicked, and the rich were just getting richer. And now it’s even worse.
So how do we create more JOBS. Let’s create more Demand!!!
Let’s put a couple of million American’s back to work doing thing that really need doing like fixing our Highways and Bridges and Tunnels and Water Systems and Sewer Systems. Let hire back the Teachers and Police Officers and Firefighters that we fired because we didn’t want to ask the already wealthy to pay something more in taxes.
So let us directly create 3 or 4 million jobs and watch those 3 or 4 million now working people start spending their paychecks and buying the things they want and creating jobs making those thing they want to buy. It really does feed on itself. So if we directly put 3 or 4 million people and the demand they create puts another million or two American’s back to work all those people are creating demand (and paying taxes, something they aren’t doing now).
Cutting Taxes and repealing regulations haven’t worked and won’t work to create jobs. Creating Demand will CREATE JOBS.
So that is what we need to do.
It starts with the President’s newest jobs bill, but that’s only a start.

What would Jesus do?

2011-06-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

I was raised as a white middle class Christian boy. A Southern Baptist. I attended First Southern Baptist Church in Colorado Springs.
We had revivals and preachers preaching fire and brimstone.
I was in the choir. We sang twice on Sunday, we even sang for the prisoners in the Colorado State Penitentiary.
I believed.
I can't tell you when I became a doubter.
But ONE of the events on a road to atheism occurred in the normal Wednesday evening meetings at the church that were half sermon and half business meeting.
I went to those back then.
A black (that was the polite way to refer to African Americans back then) family had applied for membership in our congregation.
A BLACK FAMILY WANTED TO JOIN A CONGREGATION OF A CHURCH IN THE SOUTHERN BABPTIST CONVENTION.
What were they thinking?
It is a sad reality of life in these United States that our churches are the most segregated part of American society. Many, perhaps most, churches are monochrome or very close to it.
Blacks have their churches, whites have their, Hispanics have theirs. And never the twain shall meet.
A good Christian woman stood up in the Wednesday night business meeting of the First Southern Baptist Church of Colorado Springs Colorado and said:
"They have their own church."
This good Christian woman opposed the inclusion of a Black family in our congregation for no other reason than the color of their skin.
I cannot tell you that I rose in opposition to her naked racism. I was not that brave. But that moment has stuck with me for these many years. And it is a milepost in my journey from Baptist Church Choir Member to Atheist.
There was a survey back in May 2010 (http://pewforum.org/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey-Who-Knows-What-About-Religion.aspx) that showed that Atheists (like me) understand Christianity better than your average Christian.
And maybe that’s what happened to me.
I didn’t lose my faith as much as find that faith and critical thinking are essentially two different things. If you have faith then you believe in talking serpents and virgin births and you never bother figuring out that Cain married his sister. But you do know to a certainty that god is responsible for all creation and so this how the theory called Evolution is just that, a theory that doesn’t really explain anything. How can it explain anything since we haven’t found the missing link? Yet you claim that creationism is some sort of science despite it being completely without scientific foundation.
For me, starting to read the bible critically was a bad idea. The bible, like most great religious texts, says many different things, many of them contradictory. And people of faith are quite selective in which passages they cling to.
I came to see the god of the bible as a god I could fear, but never love. A god who will condemn good observant faithful Jews and Muslims to hell because they, though they believe in god and venerate god in the manners required by their faith, they are doing it wrong. God, it seems, changes it’s mind. And it doesn’t make sure that everybody gets the message. God sends a messenger, but not everybody gets to meet this messenger personally. And this messenger looks human, not particularly god like. And this messenger gets killed. So his message didn’t seem to be that persuasive. Unless you are in that tiny group of chosen who saw this man-god after coming back to life.
Kind of an obscure way to send a message of such importance as god changing his mind about how to get to heaven.
But if you didn’t get the message, too bad. Maybe god will let you take some sunscreen to hell. I hear it’s hot down there.
And that doesn’t even address god’s condemnation of people who never even heard of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim god. They might live good lives or bad. Grow up to be a mass murderer or to cure cancer. Doesn’t matter. They didn’t get the message they didn’t even know they were supposed to be listening for. Sunscreen anyone?
Even among Christians each group claims to have their own revealed wisdom, the correct message. Catholics believe that unless you get absolution from a priest just before you die, then off to hell you go. All those people in the Twin Towers on September 11. Sorry!! Many, perhaps most of them died in a state of sin and never got the mandatory absolution so off to hell they go. And there is the Christian sect that believes that Heaven can only hold 40,000 people and so not even every member of their little sect is going to get into heaven.
So that is what happened to my faith.
I thought about it too much. Asked too many questions for which there don’t seem to be answers that make sense. That god is just too scary and unstable to actually love.
And now one part of modern Christianity leans on their faith to advocate the most un-Christian of things.
Stephen Colbert, on the Colbert Report, was interviewing a man a few years ago who was advocating for the posting of the 10 Commandments in classrooms and courtrooms across this nation. Yet when asked to name the 10 Commandments he could only name 3 of them (http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/180282/september-05-2008/better-know-a-district---lynn-westmoreland-update). He missed the First Commandment "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no Other Gods before me. He missed "Make the Sabbath and Keep it Holy." This idiot, who was a United States Representative from the State of Georgia, wanted to post the 10 Commandments in courthouses across this nation, yet he could only name 3 of the Commandments. I know more of the 10 Commandments than he did.
The number of people who claim to be Christians, but advocate for policies that Christ would never support is amazing to me.
We were attacked by Al Queda in a massive way on September 11, 2001.
What would Jesus do?
Would Jesus have invaded and conquered Afghanistan, resulting in the death of 10's of thousands of Afghani's and 4 thousand of America's bravest?
Would Jesus have invaded Iraq, a country that had NOTHING TO DO WITH September 11, 2001? A country that posed nothing even vaguely resembling a threat to this country? An invasion that has resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi's and more than 6000 American service personnel and thousands more Americans who were not in the Department of Defense.
What would Jesus have done?
Jesus never talked about taking out your enemy, he never advocating deposing governments that he didn’t like. Jesus talked about Turn the Other Cheek. He talked about not returning evil for evil. (Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing. 1 Peter 3:8,9). He talked about love and forgiveness.
Would Jesus have joined all the Christian Conservatives who advocate shooting doctors working at family planning clinics that perform some abortions?
Would Jesus have advocated scrapping Medicare as we know if (for those currently under 55) in order to fund tax reductions for the wealthy and corporations?
Would Jesus, who barely mentioned sexuality and NEVER mentioned homosexuality support Christians protesting at the funerals of Soldiers who died fighting our wars. Would he make opposition to Gay Marriage a central tenet of his policies while ignoring the fact that Divorce (which Christ was very explicit in his opposition to) ends most marriages in this nation.
Somehow, I don’t think so.
Somehow modern Christianity has been twisted to become a justification of greed. A justification for a me first attitude that says we are not our brothers keeper. If our brother needs help, don’t ask me. I only take care of my own.
The social conservatives who dominate the Republican party now loudly proclaim their Christianity while advocating policies that ignore science, denigrate the needs of those who are less fortunate, demand that Commerce is most noble when completely unfettered by pesky things like regulations, and insist, despite all the evidence, that giving more money to people who are already wealthy will somehow, years later, enrich us all.
Really.
That’s what happens when you live a belief based life.
Facts no longer matter.
You believe that tax cuts pay for themselves and spur long term economic growth.
You either deny that the world is getting warmer or you deny that human activity is the cause despite all the evidence.
You believe that businesses can be trusted to make rational decisions that will be good for the greater good, despite all the times in history when businesses did things that were good for that business, and bad for everyone else. And never being able to point to one completely unregulated industry or country that didn’t end up in disaster.
You believe that We had to invade Iraq, but not Saudi Arabia and that it wasn’t really about revenge and oil.
Turns out, I am fond of facts.
Maybe that’s why I am not a Christian.
Or a Conservative.

The Media and Real News

2011-05-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

I just turned the TV off.
I had been watching the news on CNN but just couldn't stand it anymore.
We are fighting 2 wars in Arab Muslim nations, we are aiding NATO in its operations in support of the Libyan rebels. The economy is struggling. We reached our debt limit today and Republicans seem intent on holding the entire economy hostage to their nonsensical economic theories.
And the big new is that Action Movie Star and former Governor of California Arnold Slksjlskjdflker fathered an illegitimate child with a member of his house hold staff.
This guy is an actor only in the most forgiving sense of the word who was married to a beautiful woman who was a pretty good news reader before he ran for governor.
But really, what business is it of ours now that the Arnold couldn't keep it in his pants.
He is an actor for god's sake.
I guess that CNN thinks they have to give this story a lot of play because they will lose viewer share if they don't
But in a world where we have very real and dangerous problems, does it really matter who the Arnold is banging.
I continue to be disappointed in their unwillingness to give the real important issues of our day the coverage they deserve while obsessing over how this action movie star could keep a secret like this for so long. I don't care and I don't understand why so many others do care. The sex lives of celebrities are not important.
So I will leave the TV off for now.

Stupidest and Most Offensive Thing I Have Heard Today

2011-04-01T08:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_xf383_QhU&feature=player_embedded This is past amazing. In a debate in the Indiana House of Representatives about new restrictions on abortion we have a Indiana State Representative opposing an exemption for victims of Rape or Incest because SOME WOMEN MIGHT MIGHT UP SUCH A CHARGE TO BE ALLOWED AN ABORTION. Words fail me. Who are these people?

Why did we stop building things

2011-03-15T18:40:00.000-07:00

I am confused by the Republican/Conservative world view.

It has become a mantra of Republicans/Conservatives that not only should government not do things, that government can't. This belief that government can't accomplish anything and probably shouldn't even try has become a core tenet of the Republican/Conservative meme.

I don't recognize their America.

My American government built the Panama Canal, built a railroad from the Omaha to the Pacific and in doing so American had more miles of track lain than the rest of the world combined. My America put men on the moon, build the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. My America built the Interstate Highway system. My America builds the most powerful and complex machines man has ever built.

My American government spends less than 5% administrative costs in administering Medicare, a single payer health insurance systems serving about 10's of millions of Americans.

Anytime there is a disaster anywhere in the world, my American government dispatches aid and logistic assistance to help people whether we like their government or not.

My American government paid the bills to send millions of our WWII veterans to college helping to create growth that lasts to this day.

Yet somehow the modern Conservative/Republican insists in believing in the incompetence of our own government.

Conservatives/Republicans ignore the benefits that the country as a whole has enjoyed because of these things that my American government did. My American government built the infrastructure that the greatest and strongest economy in the world runs on. My American government has sent or helped send millions of young adults to college which has always been a major factor in the success of our economy.

It is an easily provable fact that if kids are well fed they will do better in school. And if they do better in school they are far more likely to be law-abiding productive citizens. So it makes sense, to me at least, that my American government helps millions of kids from poor families get at least one or even two good meals a day. That kind of investment in our kids pays dividend in our future. So Conservatives/Republicans want to cut funding for school lunch programs.

What are they thinking?

Its amazing to me that Republicans/Conservatives seem so willfully ignorant of our history and the role my American government has played in making this country great.

And now Conservatives/Republicans are sooo opposed to the government doing the things that it has done so well for so long that our infrastructure is crumbling. Governor Christie of New Jersey shutdown a project shut down a project to build new transportation links into New York cause it might cost too much, ignoring both the immediate employment benefits of such a project and the long term economic benefits of that kind of infrastructure development. Two other governors have made similar choices shutting down high speed rail systems.

We used to build things

Great things

Things as big as our country itself

Thanks to Republicans/Conservatives it appears those days are behind us.

Thanks for nothing!

History

2011-02-21T18:33:00.000-08:00

It is funny to hear some Conservatives/Republicans talk longingly about times past in this country like the 1950's were some sort of Golden Age in America. They do so forgetting that the economy of the 50's was feeling the effect of a huge public works program called the Interstate Highway system, and that one of the drivers behind our expansion was the millions of WWII veterans who went to college paid for by the Federal Government, and that the highest marginal tax rate was 90%, and Blacks were not allowed to vote in much of this country, especially the South, and that women were still largely relegated to Teaching, Nursing and Secretary.

George Santayana, wrote, in his Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

It seems like Republicans/Conservatives are insisting on not remembering the past.

They try to claim that the Civil War was about anything OTHER than Slavery when the preservation of Slavery was the only reason for the secessionist movement in the Slave holding states.

They twist themselves into knots try to say that Hitler was a Liberal.

They lionize President Reagan while conveniently ignoring the number of times he raised taxes, ignoring his trading guns for our Hostages in Iran, ignoring the blatant illegality of Iran Contra, forgetting that he gave amnesty to 2 million illegal immigrants, forgetting that he, as Governor of California, advocated for and signed the most liberal abortion law in America at the time. They give Reagan and his tax cuts all the credit for the economic expansion of the 80's while blaming the Democrats for the deficits.

They ignore the impact that massive government spending has had on the economy with the building of the Interstate Highway System, the Space Program, the GI Bill and all the college graduates that it created, a trans-Continental railroad system, the Panama Canal, the Sacramento Delta water system that provides the water that irrigates California's Central Valley, which is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world.

They ignore Rural Electrification and the Tennessee Valley Authority and Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge.

They live is a fantasy land where corporations will do great things by all of us if we just let them, ignoring all of American History with the Robber Barons and Henry Ford's goon squads beating on union organizers and all the damage that corporations have done to our environment in a monomaniacal quest for profit at any cost. They don't want to or are simply incapable of remembering that deregulation of the savings and loan industry led, almost inevitably, the the savings and loan bailout and the deregulation of the banking industry led, just as inevitably, to the Housing Bubble and our current economic doldrums.

They remember that President Kennedy cut the top marginal tax rate from 90% to 70% while forgetting that he also eliminated many many loopholes so that tax revenues actually increased.

They insist that the stimulus package didn't create even one job while ignoring every study of the topic that talks about the stimulus bill creating as many as 6 million jobs depending on which study you cite.

They forget that previous Republicans/Conservatives have a horrible track record when predicting the economic impact of taxes or regulations.

Conservatives/Republicans predicted that the Clinton Budget, especially its tax increases, would cripple the economy.

They predicted the the Environmental Protection Act would ruin the economy

They predicted the same sort of economic disaster for the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act.

They predicted the Bush Tax cuts would spur years of robust economic growth.

And they were wrong every time.

Conservatives opposed the integration of the military and allowing women to vote.

Conservatives and Republicans have made dire predictions about the impact of gay marriage and allowing gays to serve openly in the military while no country that sanctions gay marriage has suffered as a result and the military's of Britain and Canada and Israel are all very respected and capable military's despite allowing gays to serve openly.

Conservatives/Republicans, as late as the 1970's, were still claiming the cigarettes were not addictive and didn't cause cancer and now they ignore the science again and deny that the earth is warming up or admit that its warming up but deny that human activity is the main cause or they accept that human activity is a driver of global warming but predict that addressing global warming will ruin our economy.

They need to actually study our history.
And learn from it

Any Rand and Medicare

2011-01-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

Not that this is really a surprise, but Ayn Rand, the Patron Saint of Libertarianism, recieved both Social Security and Medicare under her married name Ayn O'Connor.

This from the woman who wrote in her book “The Virtue of Selfishness” that accepting any government controls is “delivering oneself into gradual enslavement.”

Not really a surprise, but I still find it funny as hell!!

Another Global Warming Data Point

2011-01-12T16:03:00.000-08:00

According to the NOAA, 2010 was the warmest year on record.
Confirming one of the essential truths of Global Warming. The globe really is heating up.

And there is no theory that explains this warming better than a greenhouse effect resulting from increasing concentration of gases like Methane and Carbon Dioxide in the upper atmosphere resulting from human activity.

I know its cold outside today.
And its snowing in Atlanta.
None of which contradicts the science of Global Warming.

I understand why the petroleum and coal and natural gas industries don't want people to believe it. And I understand why Republicans and some Conservatives seen intent on doing the bidding of their corporate sponsors. What I don't understand is how they have convinced so many of America's citizens of the unbelievable.

But this all comes at a cost. There is no remaining doubt about what is happening. And while there is debate about how warm it will get and how fast it will warm up and how long it will take to bring temperatures down once we get green house gases under control, there is no scientific debate about the absolute necessity of doing so.

Why is it that people who so often love to wrap themselves in the flag are so willing to believe things that help to keep us dependent on foriegn oil, so willing to believe things that will make our world harder on our children. Quite rightly, our own Department of Defense sees Global Warming as a national security issue because the impacts of Global Warming on poor people around the globe will inevitably lead to instability in many nations, and that instability will likely result in increased threats to our security.

We need to act soon, act urgently, and act boldly. For our country, for our future, for our security.

Believing the Insane

2011-01-11T17:26:00.000-08:00

In some of the earliest responses that I saw to the shooting of Rep. Giffords was a piece on a right wing website claiming that the shooter was a liberal because he referenced Hitler and Mein Kampf on some website.

The discussion about incendiary rhetoric aside, anyone who can look at the historical record and try to link Nazism and liberals is either insane or deliberately delusional. I tried to have a discussion with someone who was saying this and this argument was based on the presence of Socialist in the Nazi party name. They ignore the entire history of the Nazi party under Adolph Hitler and decide that Hitler was a liberal. After all, didn't you know that Hitler co-opted several German unions (before he destroyed the unions and put their leaders in the concentration camps). So if the party has Socialist in their name and co-opted some German unions, of course Hitler was a Liberal.

These are the same people who insist that the Southern Democrats who opposed (violently in many cases) had to be liberals because they were Democrats.

Its fascinating for me to have these discussions. I know that many on the right are not all that interested in facts, but this attempt to redefine Nazism as some sort of Liberalism and to pretend that the Southern Democrats doing everything in their power to enforce and protect segregation were Liberals is simply insane.

I have not figured out how they can make such ludicrous claims with a straight face, but they do.

Republicans and Jobs

2011-01-08T11:08:00.001-08:00

The first order of business for the new Republican led House of Representatives is to repeal, in toto, the health care reform bill passed by the previous congress.

They gave their repeal measure a real catchy name "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." Cool name HUH??

The problem is that, along with most of what Republicans want us to believe about the economy, they are lying again. Every bipartisan evaluation of the impact of the health care refrom bill estimates a very small impact on employment and most predict that more jobs will be added in the health care industries than will be lost elsewhere.

In otherwords, the President's health care reform law will increase employment.

http://factcheck.org/2011/01/a-job-killing-law/

Republicans have also often referred to the Health Care reform bill as a budget buster despite the independent analysis that indicates that the Health Care Reform bill will actuall reduce the deficit.

Its like they just have to lie about stuff. Its not like these independent studies are not well publicized. They include the CBO study. But they don't seem to care about what is real, they only care about whether or not people will catch them in their lies.

Its like their claim that tax cuts create jobs. Not exactly a lie since tax cuts do create a few jobs. But they will never acknowledge that dollar for dollar tax cuts are far LESS effective at creating job than direct spending like infrastructure projects and extending unemployment benefits.

They clearly don't actually care about creating jobs.

They do like making political points though.

By saying things that aren't true, over and over again, even after what they are saying is shown to be untrue.

And isn't that the definition of a lie.

Republicans and Deficits

2011-01-06T13:58:00.000-08:00

It would be funny if it wasn't so cynically dishonest.

Republicans have been complaining about the deficit and the debt since at least Reagan's campaign against Jimmy Carter in 1980. Yet since WWI, the Deficit has consistently been higher under Republican presidents than under Democratic Presidents. Let us not forget that President Obama inherited a $1.2T deficit in the FY2009 budget from President Bush who inherited a budget surplus from President Clinton.

When the Democratic took over in 2009 they passed a bill often called PayGo which required that any new programs that they wanted to pass, had to have funding mechanisms so that the new programs wouldn't increase the deficit and the debt. As a result the Health Care Reform bill had taxes and fees and moved some medicare money around to finance the bill and the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would actually LOWER the slightly over the next 10 years. The new Food Safety overhaul bill had to get voted on twice because the funding mechanisms for that bill has originated in the Senate so it had to be reintroduced in the House to be constitutional. Not a lot of costs in that one, but the Democratic Controlled congress paid for the new programs.
Same for the 9-11 Responders Health Care bill. They closed a loophole in corporate taxes to pay for it.
Cap and Trade was designed to be self financing.

So the first bill that the House intends to vote on is their repeal, in its entirety, of the Health Care Reform bill. The CBO estimates that repealing the bill will COST the federal government $230B over 10 years. The Republicans, who whine and complain constantly about the deficit and the debt, want to add $230B to the National Debt. The have no intention of making any attempt to pay the cost of their proposal.

And it gets worse.

They want to replace PayGo with something they call CutGo. Its like PayGo except that it demands that any new spending be matched by spending cuts elsewhere. It doesn't allow using tax or fee increases to fund new spending. But the really stupid part is that they insist that ANY TAX CUTS DON'T HAVE TO BE PAID FOR!

They repeat the same idiocy that tax cuts stimulate the economy and that they pay for themselves over time. The first is barely true, the second is a complete LIE. Tax cuts are the single worst way to stimulate the economy. Its been tried and it hasn't worked. Study after study comes to the same conclusion. 1 dollar in tax cuts adds about $1.06 in additional economic activity. 1 dollar in direct spending (like infrastructure projects and unemployment benefits) add more than $1.50 in additional economic activity.

What do tax cuts really do.

THEY ADD TO THE DEFICIT. Look at the history. Reagan cut taxes, the deficit exploded. BushII cut taxes, the deficit went to new heights.

One of the bills passed in the lame duck congress was a compromise bill on extending the Bush tax cuts and extending employment benefits for the long term unemployed. Republicans insisted that the bill extend the tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans, at a cost of almost $1T over 10 years and made not attempt to pay for it.

Every time they take an important action the Republicans demonstrate over and over again that they only want to complain about the deficit, not really do anything about it.

And other than the new Teabaggers, most of these people are not studid, they know they are lying and they just don't care.

Success or Failure

2010-12-20T19:03:00.000-08:00

Like many Liberals I have been dissappointed in some of the things that this Administration and the Democratic Congress have done in the past two years.

There are clearly things that could have gone better, but the reality is that the President and Congress have been historically successful in enacting most of their agenda.

Start with Health Care Reform. It didn't go as far as I would have liked, it didn't even contain a public option, but its still an amazing advance for this country, something Democrats have been advocating for almost a century.

Reform of the student loan program that will result in more student loans and more Pell grants and simplier applications.

Extending unemployment benefits for long term unemployed until the end of 2011.

Repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell

Reform of the regulations that govern Wall Street and new customer protections in lending.

The largest stimulus package in history resulting in the creation of saving of as many as 4 million jobs.

One of the largest tax cuts in history.

And thats only the highlights.

All in all an amazing legislative record.

I wanted more. I still do. We need to address Global Warming with either Cap and Trade or a simple Carbon Tax. Immigration Reform is incredibly important. We need to finish our withdrawl from Iraq and remove ourselves as much as possible from Afghanistan. Close Gitmo.

I want more.

But they have accomplished a hell of a lot.

I call it a Success!!

We should be proud!

A Great Victory for America

2010-12-20T19:01:00.000-08:00

Its almost done.
In the next few days the President of the United States will sign a bill repealing the abomination commonly referred to as Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Finally!

Stand up and BRAG

2010-10-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

I was reading one of my favorite liberal blogs (Hullabaloo) where Digby was happy to prove that the Koch brothers funded one of the principal groups that helped get the tea bagger movement going and then lied about it.

And it struck me, WHO CARES?

I am sure that if you proved with canceled checks to a teabagger that their movement was started by a billionaire, they wouldn't care. Its only a fact and tea baggers are believers without a strong appetite for facts

I guess I don't care who paid to get the baggers all fired up.
Conservatives have their billionaires, we have ours and they all spend tons of money in support of their beliefs and goals

The question is not who funds the idiots, the question is why do we allow them to win.

Why are our supposed leaders not out there shouting out how proud they are of their accomplishments. Why are our supposed leaders not out there reminding the voters that the economy historicaly performs better under Democratic Presidents than under Republicans, that Democrats have a better record on the deficit than Republicans, that taxes for 95% of working families have actually gone down under this President, that the Health Care Reform bill will actually reduce the deficit, that global warming is real and DEMANDS action, that there are very VERY few SMALL business owners making 250,000 or more per year, that the wealthiest 1% of the population have more of the national wealth than the bottom 50% and that wealth is more concentrated now that it was before the great depression.

The problem is not who financed the startup of the tea bagger movement, the problem is that our leaders are so afraid of being called bad names by the Republicans they are cowering in the corner begging please don't call me a Socialist again.

We need to get out and drag out leaders out and BRAG about what Democrats have accomplished in 2 years and BRAG about what Democrats have accomplished in the last 60 years and we need to challenge the Republicans to tell us how they are going to balance the budget without raising taxes or cutting defense spending or cutting medicare or cutting Social Security. Expose them for the demagogues they have become without any real plans who are only interested in blaming someone else for their failures so that they can get back in power and fail again.

Its not just enough to counter the Republican lies with the truth, We have to present a positive vision of the accomplishments of this Administration and Democratic Administrations since WWII and a strong positive REALISTIC vision for where we are going towards.

Fuck the Koch brothers and all the other millionaires and billionaires who are funding the baggers. They aren't winning because of their money. They aren't even winning because they have a better message.

They are winning because WE are acting afraid.

We need to be PROUD of what has been done both in the past 2 years and in the past 60 and we need to stand up. We need to take back the Liberal label and fill it with the pride that Liberal accomplishments deserve.

These People are Nuts

2010-10-09T18:22:00.000-07:00

I am beginning to think that a significant fraction of the population is simply unhinged.

I have been having several discussions on conservative blogs about Global Warming. And there are still people out there who deny that either the average global surface temperature is increasing or that the increase it due to human activity or both. Some of them have been known to say that Global Warming is good, it will lead to nicer temperatures in Canada so its got to be a good thing.

And when I ask them about the science what I get in most cases is a conspiracy theory.

It kinda goes like this.

Every Climate Scientist who has published a peer reviewed paper on Climate Change and the human activity factors that are driving it is part of a conspiracy. Some, maybe many, perhaps even all, know that its not true but if they admit it then they will lose funding for their studies. And since they are the ones doing the peer reviews, they can reject papers that contradict this conspiracy driven false explanation. So they can control the process and eliminate the voice of dissent by simply rejecting papers that don't match the orthodoxy.

All of them.

Every one of the more than 1000 studies dating back over 20 years is part of this conspiracy. Not a one of them has won the lottery and had enough money that they didn't have to worry about grants so they can come into the open and expose the conspiracy.

This is the gist of the explanation that I get in many of the discussions that I have. Thousands of scientists are hiding the truth from us and have been for decades now.

This apparently is easier for these people to accept than all the supposed evidence that the scientists claim to have.

If you point out that 2009 was the hottest year on record, they say we can't be sure because 50 years ago thermometers were as accurate as they are now. If you talk about tree ring studies, they simply reject the concept that we can learn anything about the past from tree rings. If you talk about ice cores they reject using ice cores because of isotopic drift. If you talk about the glaciers receding over most of the world, they talk about a segment of South American or somewhere where the glaciers grew last year more than they have in a thousand years. And they will tell you with certainty that volcanoes put out an order of magnitude more CO2 than human activity. And they stick to their guns. They believe.

There mind is made up and they are not interested in facts. Actually they are convinced that all the facts coming from the climate scientists who have produced more than 1000 studies on this issue are all somehow distorted, even deceptively altered to fit a false narrative.

They remind me of the Swift Boaters in 2004. They believed all the people who were willing to challenge Senator Kerry's honesty and heroism based on the testimony who were not on his boat. Many of the people never even met Lt Kerry. Many were not in the fights he was in. Those people who were actually on his Swift Boat all supported his testimony. But people like the Global Warming deniers chose to believe everybody else, not the people who actually served on the Swift Boat Lt Kerry commanded. In the action that drew the most debate, Lt. Kerry's boat was part of a small flotilla of Swift Boats under the overall command of a man who later became one of the leaders of the Swift Boat lie. That overall commander got a Bronze Star for what happened that day, just like Lt. Kerry did. And if you read the Bronze Star citation for the overall commander, it supports all the things that he later said never happened. But people, for reasons passing understanding still want to believe that Lt. Kerry is some sort of cowardly liar.

Like I said. Nuts!!

These are probably the same kind people who, 25 or 30 years ago, who were denying that cigarettes were addictive or caused cancer.

And then there are the Creationists. They may be the funniest of all. They can't even agree amongst themselves if the Earth is 5000 or 5Billion years old. Some of them insist that humanity and the Dinosaurs actually coexisted on this planet sometime within the past 5 millennium. And they want their fantasy to be taught as science. Despite having no scientific evidence to support their myriad of theories. Despite the fact that many of their theories directly contradict the evidence available to science (getting back to humans and dinosaurs sharing the planet at one point in time).

They believe what they want to believe and when asked to provide some sort of evidence for their beliefs, they can't. They know that Evolution or Global Warming both can't be right. They just know it, so the just spout anything they can think of. And then they accuse the real scientists of incompetence or deliberate distortions or even fraud.

The new theme I have been hearing recently is that Liberals are the real racists and that the civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's was really a movement within the Conservative movement and, did I mention, that all Liberals are Racists. Its a bizzaro world vision where white is black and day is night.

Don't try to confuse them with the facts, cause I am beginning to think they are all simply nuts.

Why are the Republicans so popular

2010-10-06T18:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while which is in some ways a reflection of the ways in which the current political environment has disheartened me.

But I am back and slightly pissed off.

My party has failed to put out its message.

This congress has been one of the most productive congresses since President Johnson's first full term. They passed a health care reform bill that, though not going as far as I would have liked, was a major advance for bringing the US into the 21 century. They passed the largest stimulus package in history in response to inheriting the most devestating recession this country has seen since the Great Depression. They overhauled the Student Loan program taking huge subsudies away from private lenders and making most of those savings available in additional Pell Grants and loans. The House even passed Cap and Trade legislation as a major step towards addressing the looming crisis' associated with Global Warming.

The stimulus package created 4 - 6 million jobs and stopped the recession from being even deeper and broader. The health care reform bill will bring private health care insurance to an additional 32million Americans while actually reducing the deficit slightly. It will also end the most obnoxious of Insurance Company abuses and it will, long term, help to reduce health care costs. And it closed the donut hole in the Prescription Drug bill passed under President Bush. It wasn't all that I wanted, but it was a major first step, long over due and ugly in its creation, but a huge start none the less.

But instead of trumpeting their successes, my party is running around with their tail between their legs while Republicans and Tea Baggers continue to tell every lie they can think of about everything this Congress has acheieved.

They lied about the Health Care Reform bill providing subsudies to illegal aliens, they lied about the health care reform bill having some thing Sarah Palin called Death Panels, they lied about the health care reform bill being a budget buster even though the CBO scored the bill as actually reducing the deficit, they lied about the bill calling for rationing, they lied about the bill taking $500Billion away from Medicare, they lied about it providing subsudies for policies that would pay for abortions. Despite not have any facts to support them, they continue to tell many of those same lies today.

They lied and continue to lie about the stimulus bill claiming that it failed completely and didn't create any jobs despite the results of every study that shows that the stimulus bill created between 4 and 6 million jobs, WHILE ACTUALLY REDUCING TAXES FOR 95% OF AMERICA'S WORKING FAMILIES! And they keep lying about our taxes going when when they have actually gone down.

They lied about the cost to America's families of the Cap and Trade legislation, using exaggerated numbers from a partisan study whose only real purpose seems to be so that they could cite a study when they lied.

They continue to deny the facts of Global despite the simple fact that EVERY published climate scientist who has studied the question agrees that human activity is the major driver in Global Warming. They put out stories that Volcanos put out more CO2 than Human Activity, which is not even close to true. Human Activity contribute atleast 100 times more CO2 to the atmosphere that volcanic activity. They put out stories that the current global warming trend is caused by sunspots or the solar cycle, neither of which is significant enough to explain the current temperature trends.

And then they say that even if Global Warming is being caused by human activity, fixing it is too expensive, again using partisan studies that have little or no basis in reality.

And somehow they have convinced themselves and many other that Global warming is a conspiracy by climate scientists, every one of them, to get more money for studies or something like that. Seeming to ignore the simple reality that if a Climate Scientist had come to the Bush Administration with a proposal for a study that would somehow disprove the human connection to global warming, the Bush Administartion would have happily funded their study and trumpeted its results.

And somehow they have convinced the American Populace that Republicans are somehow better stewards of the US Economy than Democrats. A blatant and bald-faced lie.

Compare the job growth under Democratic and Republican Presidents and its clear, the economy has consistently created more jobs under Democratic Presidents than under Republican.

During the much maigned Jimmy Carter's one term, the economy added more than 3 million jobs a year, far better than Nixon or Ford before him or Reagan and Bush after him. Under Bill Clinton the economy added 2.4 million jobs a year, far better than Reagan and BushI before him and immeasurably more than BushII whose administration was marked by the most dismal economic performance since the Great Depression and who bequeathed his predecessor the deepest recession in 70 years.

But its more than just job growth.

Each of these measure of national economic activity, job create, GDP growth, Stock prices all performed better under Democratic Presidents than Republican.

And now Republicans and Conservatives are all enraged about the Deficit pretending that the current deficits are the result of President Obama's spending spree or something. Yet another lie. They want you to forget that the most of the current deficit is the result of the previous administrations policies, fighting two wars without paying for them, the unpaid for prescription drug benefit, and the Bush Tax Cuts that benefited mostly the wealthy while exploding the deficit. Somehow now this is all President Obama's fault, the Republican party had nothing to do with the deficit. Another bald-faced lie.

The Bush era tax cuts and two unpaid for wars constitute the vast bulk of the current deficit. And this chart doesn't even show the $700Billon dollar cost of the Medicare Prescription Drug benefit that President Bush mad no attempt to pay for.

They lie because lying is working for them. And its working for them because the Democrats are not out there calling them liars every time they trot out one of their lies.

I don't know why, but they are not.

And the lies are killing us.

We need to do a better job at getting the truth out.

James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010

2010-08-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

This bill has the simple task of paying compensation, mostly health care costs, for the thousands of people who worked in horrible conditions after the attacks on 9/11 to try and find survivors in the rubble.

It would cost about $8.4B over 10 year and then might cost another $4B after that. True to their way of operating, the Democratic controlled congress identified a way to pay the cost. They proposed to close a tax loophole used by corporations to avoid paying taxes.

For bizarre and probably overly political reasons, the bill came to the House floor under a rule that required it get a 2/3 majority. But still it should have passed.

155 out of 167 Republicans voted against the bill and it failed passage.

I am still not clear why they voted against it.

The biggest reason I have found is that it included additional tax revenue from closing a loophole.

It appears that 155 Republicans (and 4 Democrats) put the interests of corporations ahead of the interests of those heroes who worked so hard to recover from the attacks on 9/11.

I have friends who really have just come to hate Conservatives/Republicans. I don't hate them, partially because I am related to many of them. But I don't understand their priorities. This concept that all taxes for any purpose no matter who pays them are bad and should be cut or eliminated is fiscal insanity. But its an insanity that they cling to with both arms.

I guess I should pity them their insanity, but when they do stuff like this I realize that is the victims of their insanity that I must reserve my pity for.

Corporations

2010-08-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

I got asked once why I don't like corporations.

The answer is not that I don't LIKE corporations, the answer is that I don't TRUST corporations.

I have worked for various corporations for most of the last 20+ years of my life. Corporations are an integral part of the American economy. But they are not trustworthy. BP develops of culture of cutting corners in the pursuit of profit and we have the oil refinery accident a few years ago followed by the largest unintentional oil spill in history. They and the other oil companies basically infiltrated and compromised the agency tasked with regulating and monitoring their actions and now we have an environmental disaster of literally unknown proportions where we won't know the final cost for years. The company that owned that mine in West Virginia where 29 miners died had a long history of simply ignoring the safety rules and then protesting/contesting the fines for as long as possible before finally paying the fines since it seemed to cost them less that way than actually caring about the safety of their workers.

I could go on and on and on.

The newest proof, as if more was needed, was a proposed deal between Verizon and Google where Google's YouTube site would get priority access (and the resulting higher speeds) than other sites not willing to pay a premium. Two big corporations getting together in a way that will in the end only profit other big corporations while relegating smaller companies and non-profits to second class status on the internet. Its not like they aren't already making money on their investments. They just want to make more.

That, after all, is a corporations job. To make money so they can pay dividends to their shareholders, so their stock price will go up.

To make money.

That is their job. That is the principle, even sole motive.

I have no problem with that. Corporations making money drives the economy.

But nowhere in there does the corporation have my best interests at heart. Even if I work for them, they are only as good to me as they need to be to keep me from leaving (unless they decide they can save money by replacing me with someone else, perhaps in China).

Nowhere in there does the corporation care about the environment. Nowhere in there does the corporation care about the larger economy. Nowhere in there does the corporation care about national security. That's not their job. Profit is their job.

So if I think we should regulate industry, so if I think that allowing corporations should be allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money directly supporting the candidates of their choice, so if I think that corporations should not be allowed to get to big to fail, its not because I don't like corporations. I am hoping that some corporation will decide that they like my skill and experience set and hire me.

But I don't trust corporations.
And neither should you.

Climate Change/Global Warming Continues

2010-08-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its most recent State of the Climate report.

Its conclusions are not surprising.

Last decade was the warmest decade on Record

Last year was the warmest year on Record

There are fewer and fewer Climate Change deniers now. And their arguments are more and more convoluted.

And yet, Conservatives and the Republican Party are determined to prevent the US congress from taking any reasonable or effective action to address our contribution to that problem. For the most part they have stopped claiming its all a fraud or putting forward some new unscientific argument. Now they are just saying we can't afford to do anything.

I guess this is progress of a sort. But the problem remains and its critical that we, as a nation act. This concept that companies are allowed to massively pollute the environment in a way that threaten huge environmental and economic disasters and should not have to pay for that pollution, and should not be compelled to reduce and even eliminate that pollution is incredible to me.

If your neighbor backed his car up to your house and ran a hose from his car into your house, you would have a reason to object. Yet that is what power companies do every day. They are not the only polluters, but they are certainly one of the largest. And every day they are allowed to pump thousands of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, contributing to and accelerating Global Warming. And according to Conservatives and the Republican Party, thats OK. They should be able to do that as much as they want for as long as they want without cost or constraint.

Stuff like this makes me wonder, what are their priorities?

With deficits largely resulting from Conservative/Republican backed tax cuts and mindless defense spending that will be a burden on our descendants for decades, even generations and their refusal to do anything to address Global Warming dooming our descendants environmental and economic impacts we can only guess at, what do they really care about?

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global

A Woman Takes Command

2010-08-04T19:38:00.001-07:00

How far we have come.

http://www.military.com/news/article/first-woman-takes-helm-of-carrier-group.html?ESRC=navy-a.nl

When I was in the Navy's Officer Candidate School back in 1976, we got some mandated sensitivity training about the role of women in the US Navy. My Company Officer (who was married to a female Naval Officer who was also a Company Officer) gave us some simple advice.

"You can't F*%k em and work em at the same time." Crudely put but probably sage advice. Unfortunately he didn't stop there. He paused slightly and then added "The idea is to F%* them first." We all chuckled and grinned at his wisdom and sense of humor.

In my time in the Navy, we went through a series of scandals as we worked out the issues around integrating women into our combat forces. Tailhook was probably the most famous, but no where near the most egregious.

And now we have a woman commanding a Carrier Battle Group. Amazing!

Despite the challenges we face, I love this country more and more every day.

Equal Rights

2010-08-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

Its finally happened.
A Federal judge has ruled that California's law prohibiting same sex marriage violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the US Constitution.

This will probably be appealed, eventually to the US Supreme Court, but for now there is a Federal precedent against this form of discrimination.

Its about time

We are funding the Taliban in Afghanistan

2010-07-26T12:16:00.000-07:00

If there is any clearer demonstration of the likely impossible challenges we face in Afghanistan it is this.

We are funding the Taliban

While we fight them

They may well be getting more money from us than from the Poppy/Herion trade.

We need to leave Afghanistan
Sooner rather than later

Do Conservatives ever get tired of being Lied to by other Conservatives

2010-07-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

The whole Shirley Sherrod disaster just bring a question to mind.

Are Conservatives tired of being lied to yet?

Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves - A Lie

Terry Schiavo really was in a Persistent Vegatative State despite Bill Frist's Lie

President Obama was not born in Kenya - A Lie

President Obama does not hate America or White People - A Lie

The health care bill did not use federal funds for abortion - A Lie

The health care bill did not provide subsudies to illegal aliens - A Lie

There were no Death Panels or anything like that in the bill - A Lie

President Obama is not a Socialist - A Lie

Acorn was never accused of Voter Fraud - A Lie

Passing the 1993 budget with its Tax Increases did not destroy the American Economy - A Lie

Passing the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act did not destroy the American Economy - A Lie

Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Queda - A Lie

And they are still lying about the human contribution to Global Warming.

And Shirley Sherrod is not a racist.

And it was the Bush Justice Department, not the Obama Justice Department, that decided no prosecutable crime was committed in the New Black Panthers case - despite the lies we were being told.

In almost every issue we face as a nation Republicans/Conservatives have lied to everyone.

Shirley Sherrod is only the latest example.

You would think Conservatives would get tired of being lied to.

Unemployment Insurance

2010-07-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

I don't know if there is a better example of the difference between Liberals and Conservatives than the debate over extending unemployment benefits in the midst of this current recession.

Conservatives in this current debate have insisted that any extension of unemployment benefits be paid for in some way. Given that Conservatives seem to reflexively oppose any proposal that raises any taxes in any way for anybody, that means that they insist the some other program get cut enough to pay for the extension of unemployment benefits.

Liberals in this debate argue that in the current economic recession, the stimulative benefit of extending unemployment benefits more than justifies the small impact such an extension has on the current deficit or the accumulated debt.

Conservatives are, as usual, wrong on the issue. Allowing 1.2 million Americans fall off the edge of Unemployment Insurance because extending that insurance might add a whole 0.3% to the national debt is both cruel and insane.

Senator Jon Kyl, the Minority Whip in the Senate, stated his firm belief that we as a nation could not justify increasing the national debt by $10 billion dollars to extend unemployment insurance but he is equally firm in his belief that retaining the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthiest of Americans, at a cost of almost $700 Billion, is obviously justified despite its direct impact on the national debt. Almost 70 times the impact on the national debt of the unemployment insurance extension he opposes.

In doing so he talks about the stimulative impact of the tax cuts and ignores the stimulative impacts of unemployment insurance despite studies that show that every 1 dollar or tax cuts results in $1.03 in economic activity while every 1 dollar in unemployment insurance payments results in $1.63 in economic activity. Unemployment insurance payments have a far far greater stimulative impact than tax cuts and add far less to the deficit than the tax cuts yet Republicans/Conservatives like Senator Kyl are always in favor or tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich and almost always opposed to unemployment insurance that benefits those in need.

Any wonder that I am a Liberal??

A Boomer Apologizes

2010-07-05T16:31:00.001-07:00

I recently turned 56 years old. My generation dominates the political stage and the management of business large and small. We run the biggest companies and the non-profits and we fill up the upper reaches of bureaucracies across this land. We dominate the Congress of the United States and most state Legislatures. Our President is a Boomer.

And we, as a generation have screwed our children and theirs. We weren't even subtle about it. Our children are inheriting a world where global warming will probably kill millions and displace even more. Much of the Gulf of Mexico becomes a dead zone every year because of the crap we put into our water. Same for much of Puget Sound and the Chesapeake Bay. Most of our rivers have excessive levels of mercury in them from burning coal. We are in the middle of a mass extinction that will rival the worst of the mass extinctions in our planet's history. Most of the major industrialized nations have large accumulated national debts that our children and theirs will have to pay for. We are bequeathing to generation X (or what every you want to call those who are destined to follow us) such horrible eating habits that our children will likely not live as long as we did because we seem to insist on feeding them crap that only barely resembles food while at the same time starving our school systems of the resources they need to have active physical education programs and healthy meals. We were more willing to spend money building prisons than finding ways to prevent crime. Coming out of this recession, those who follow will be faced with years at least of sluggish economic growth and little or no growth in real wages for the vast majority of our people. And the debt that we are leaving them will prevent them from taking some of the bold actions that might dramatically alter the world they will have to deal with.

I can point to people and policies that my generation put in place as the cause of many of these problems. I can talk about this policy or that policy that could have prevented some of these problems. As a Liberal I would make a good case that Liberal policies would have prevented or reduced these problems.

But we as a generation didn't effective address them.

We still have time. We are not yet leaving the stage. We can still make things better. But based on what we have done so far, I am not hopeful.

So I apologize to the generations that follow the Baby Boomers. We appear to be leaving you a massive mess. A mess that some of us predicted but we, collectively, could not muster the will or consensus to fix. I hope you do a better job than we did. I have to believe that, right now, our parents generation, sometimes called the Greatest Generation, are pretty disgusted with us.

I hope you, the generations that follow, can forgive us.

Its Fundamental

2010-05-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

For any of you that have read this blog over the past two years it’s no surprise to know that I am a Liberal. A Progressive. A Democrat.

And proud of it.

Perhaps I haven't defined why?
If you don't care, move on there is nothing to see here.

But if you are even vaguely interested, heres why I am a Liberal/Progressive/Democrat.

Because I believe that the government can do some good.

I spent 13 years in the United States Navy. Since then I have worked with agencies of three different government departments as well as a state agency and a number of private companies mostly in power generation or the manufacture of medical devices. And through it all I have been largely impressed by the professionalism of the federal civil servants I have worked with and with their dedication.

Maybe I am delusional. I have been called worse. But in all that I have done, I have seen people who were doing their best every day to make this country better. In the end, I have far more trust and faith in government bureaucrats than I do in politicians

And I believe that government can be a force for good in our lives.

And that, from my observation, is the fundamental difference between me and most Republicans/Conservatives.

They believe, it seems to me, in the fundamental incompetence of government. They seem to believe that the government, outside of national security, is basically a drag on the economy. That is my perception anyway. I had one Conservative tell me that they believed in tax cuts with or without spending cuts because that put more money is their pocket. And they didn't even recognize the truth that, long term, tax cuts that aren't paid for take money out of all our pockets and out of the pockets of our children and grandchildren and probably their grandchildren as well.

So, to me, the difference is fundamental.

Can the government do some good or is government somehow inherently either destructive or incometent.

I believe it can do some good.

Don't Ask Don't Tell

2010-05-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

Finally
We are on the cusp of repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell
75% of Americans believe that openly gay Americans should be allowed to serve.
I only mention a poll number because of the number of times Conservatives and Republicans cited poll numbers in their oppostion to things like Health Care Reform. On this issue, polls are trash. This, like Gay Marriate, is a Civil Rights issue.

But finally, in accordance with the will of the vast majority of the American People, we are on the Cusp of repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell.

And yet, Republicans/Conservatives insist that this is a bad thing and they promise a fillibuster.

Most of the Europe and the Isreali's all allow openly gay men and women to serve in their armed forces. And despite the jokes you might want to make about the Ducth Army, nobody doubts the combat effectiveness of either the Isreali or British Armies. This blather about unit cohevisness is bullshit. I left the United States Navy almost 20 years ago and even then, the members of the wardrooms that I was in didn't care if a person was gay or straight, as long as they could do the job.

It's sad that religious conservatives have such sway in our system right now that this is even an issue.

There is no evidence, NONE, that allowing gays to serve openly in the military will have any negative impact on force readiness, or unit cohesion or combat effectiveness. But because Religious Conservatives want to focus on two verses from Leviticus and ignore the rest of the book (how many Christian Conservatives happily eat pork) we are still having this debate.

So now, many of the Republicans in the Senate are promising to filibuster the repeal of this law. This law that has no basis in fact. This law that is opposed by the vast majority of the American people. This law that is actively hurting our National Security by kicking out of the military more than 10,000 good honorable effective service members for no reason other than the silly beliefs of a small minority. Finally we are on the cusp of repeal

Its a small victory, but I will take it.

Next

Gay Marriage

The Tea Party

2010-05-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

Those who know me know that I have no respect for the vast majority of Tea Baggers. I don't even call them Tea Party members. I have though, not always expressed my reasons for that disdain well. I found this paragraph in Digby's Blog Hullabloo and it expresses my feelings as well as anything I have seen.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/tyranny-for-dummies.html

I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that tea partiers are having fits over a health care plan which they claim is a usurpation of our constitutional rights, but stripping Americans of their citizenship when someone suspects them of a crime is worth considering. Torture and indefinite imprisonment are perfectly in keeping with our founding principles but asking people to fill out a census form is Big Brother in action. Profiling anyone who some beat cop thinks might not be a citizen is a-ok, but making it difficult for terrorist suspects to buy a gun is an assault on the constitution. What the hell?

Thanks to Digby for this.

Conservatives - Wrong again

2010-05-04T07:52:00.000-07:00

The advocates of expanded drilling (off-shore or in Alaska or anywhere else they believe oil to be hiding) have been telling us how safe and environmentally benign drilling is. After there hadn't been a major disaster at one of these drilling platforms in years so they must be safe!!

Wrong again.

And now, thanks to Drill Baby Drill, we have a looming environmental disaster on the Gulf Coast that will likely devastate commercial fishing for years, perhaps decades (just look to the continuing affect of the Exxon Valdez disaster on Prince William Sound). The impact on tourism is already being felt and will last for years.

Conservatives were wrong again, its like a habit for them. Off-Shore oil rigs are not safe and benign, they are environmental and financial disasters waiting to happen.

Of course, liberals have been predicting exactly this kind of disaster and yet again were right about it.

Conservatives have been wrong about so much but they continue to insist that they have the magic policies that will fix everything.

They pushed for deregulation of banking, got Glass Stegel repealed, told everyone that the Financial Services industry could regulate itself and claimed that regulating the market in derivatives would stifle innovation and what did all that got us was a new financial meltdown that trashed the entire economy. Boy were they wrong.

They opposed the Environmental Protection Act and the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, predicting that each would lead to economic disaster. They were wrong.

They opposed Clintons 1993 budget with its tax increases claiming that that would lead to economic ruination and financial devastation. They were wrong.

They supported the Bush Tax Cuts, claiming that the tax cuts would not explode the deficit and that we would grow our way out of deficits. They were wrong.

They opposed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, I still don't understand why, and they were wrong there as well.

Now they continue to claim that Climate Change/Global Warming is some sort of hoax perpetrated by a thousand or so Climate Scientists in order to make Al Gore rich or something. They don't have a viable alternative scientific explanation for what is happening, but they know all those pesky scientists have to be wrong. And their denial of what the science clearly shows is delaying our addressing the problem. And those delays will cost people in the United States and around the world greatly. They are wrong again and are insisting that we do nothing about a looming disaster.

They are opposed to gays serving in the military because they believe that homosexuality is bad and gross and an abomination and really bad. They talk about good order and discipline but can't show any evidence that allowing open homosexuals to serve in the armed forces of Israel or Great Britain or Canada has made those forces less effective or riven with hidden sexual tension. Wrong again.

So now here we are again, having to pay a price for the errors of conservatives.

I am tired of paying for their mistakes.

Climate Change

2010-04-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

Its a beautiful day outside today, particularly warm for early spring. I saw a item on CNN that 90 cities set new records for high temperatures today. I thought about the Climate Change deniers who were pretending like a cold winter in the Northeast with record snowfall as far south as DC somehow proved that the earth is not actually heating up. I just wonder what they will say if we continue to have record high temperatures around the country. When they then say that these high temperatures contradict what they were saying 3 months ago or will they just ignore the high temperatures because high temperatures don't agree with what the want.

It would be just funny if the opposition of people who choose to ignore clear and compelling science was not impeding our ability to respond nationally to the most dangerous envirnmental crisis we have faced in recorded history.

Will these people ever get tired of being wrong?

Disdain

2010-03-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

I am elated that our Congress under our President's leadership has finally passed a Health Care Reform package and it has been signed into law. The bill is not perfect (I am still an advocate for single payer), but its a great start.

I gained a very small amount of noteiriety in the last days of the debate be getting my picture taken at a Health Care Reform rally discussing the bill with an opponent of reform. The thing that struck me about the opposition was their almost complete lack of knowledge on the bill. They kept telling me that it was 2700 pages long and that nobody knew what was in it, despite the fact that it had been passed by the Senate 3 months earlier and was available online for anyone to read. They kept telling me it would take away their freedoms but not one of them could tell me which part of the bill would violate any of their freedoms or which part of the bill was contrary to the Constitution. I was told I was a Communist or a Socialist and the I was destroying the Constitution and that I was pig-headed (they were right about that) and that I didn't have any facts.

But, with one exception, none of them could or would even try to answer any of my questions. None of them could define Socialism even though they knew I was one (or maybe a Communist but they couldn't define that either).

One man didn't call me names and was actually interested in discussing issues. He was of the opinion that Health Insurance Companies were not subject to regulation under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution because the states currently do most of the regulation of Health Insurance Companies. I disagreed that Blue Cross/Blue Shield or Anthem or United Health Care companies were not engaged in Interstate Commerce, but atleast he had a coherent well articulated argument. He did want to tell me how the Public Option sections of the House passed Health Care Reform bill would have inevitably destroyed all Private Insurance companies but I didn't really discuss that much since the Public Option was not in the Senate Bill that was being voted on.

One man in a crowd of 40 or so opponents that could intelligently articulate real arguments against the proposed bill. The rest either ignored me or just followed me around shouting slogans at me or just told me I was a pigheaded Constitution hating Socialist/Communist who wanted to destroy our Freedoms and didn't have any facts. At least they got the pig headed thing right.

Then today I saw this poll and it all sort of became clear.

For the most part, Republicans no longer seem interested in facts.

A new Research 2000 poll of more than 2,000 Republicans, conducted for the liberal blog Daily Kos, has some eyebrow-raising findings:
-- 63% of them believe President Obama is a socialist
-- 53% believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama is
-- 39% believe he should be impeached
-- 36% believe he wasn't born in the United States
-- 31% believe the president hates white people
-- 24% believe the president wants the terrorists to win
-- 23% believe their state should secede from the union

36% believe that President Obama is not an American. I wonder if many of the 63% who consider him a Socialist can actually define the term. So many of the objections that were made against the bill were simply not true. But Republicans/Conservatives just didn't seem to care about facts or the truth.

24% of Republicans think the President wants the terrorists to win.

What have they been smoking?

Over the course of this debate I ahve become more and more dismissive of Republicans/Conservatives because of the things this poll exposes. Largely they seem uninterested in the facts, prefering to stick to their talking points and slogans.

There are some Republican's/Conservatives who understand these bills and have intelligent articulate objections to them. I just have trouble finding them.

We, as a nation, have serious problems and they deserve serious intelligent debate. But thats not what we have been getting. And with the debate on Cap and Trade coming up I have little confidence that Republicans/Conservatives will be interested in discussing those bills factually either. It would be great, but I am not holding my breath.

24% of Republicans believe their state should secede from the United States. And they say I am the one trying to destroy America.

I don't belong to an organized Party, I'm a Democrat

2010-03-02T07:44:00.000-08:00

Just when I think my Representatives in Washington might actually be getting their act together, this happens.

Retiring Republican Senator Jim Bunning, a man so unpopular that his leadership asked him not to run, decided last week that he was going to stand up for fiscal responsibility, after ignoring the concept for the entire Bush Presidency, he decides now is the time. So he opposes allowing a vote on a small short term extension of unemployment benefits and some other stimulus items in a $10Billion package. It wouldn't be noteworthy, he is a known nutcase after all, except my Party, the Democratic Leadership in the Senate lets him get away with it. Instead of calling for a cloture vote and squashing this idiot like a grape, they recess for the weekend and go home to complain about him.

F*(K!!!

So now the leadership of my party is allowing this nutcase to deny extended unemployment benefits to about 200,000 people, he has caused the layoff of about 2000 people whose jobs were being funded by provisions in this bill and some of those who were able to afford health care because of the extension of COBRA subsidies in this bill now cannot.

All I hear on the news is that the Democrats could overcome this idiot easily at any time, but they are enjoying having the issue instead of continuing to accomplish things.

No wonder the Tea Baggers are so popular!!

Sigh

President Jimmy Carter

2010-02-25T18:13:00.000-08:00

A frequent commenter on my blog once said "Oh, and agreeing with Carter on nearly anything is a sad state of affairs as I wouldn't trust him to bus tables."

We were discussing President Carter's statement last year that some of the opposition to President Obama was driven by racism. The way he said it might have overstated the current impact of racism, but to me it almost goes without saying that his basic point was right. Some of the opposition to President Obama was racist at its core.

I have thought about that and about President Carter's legacy alot. So I went back and read his famous "Malaise" speech. I mourn for this country that he did not achieve what he set out to do and how much better off we would have been had he succeeded
http://www.rightwingnews.com/speeches/carter.php

As I read it, his speech had two core messages. That we had lost our sense of national community and that we had to take radical action to reduce and eventually eliminate our dependence of foriegn oil.

These words are even more true today than they were in 1979 when he gave this speech.

"The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our Nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning."

His message was simple if not easy

"One of the visitors to Camp David last week put it this way: "We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America."

And the first test of America's ability to rise to new challenges was energy. He proposed drastic actions to address what was already an energy crisis. He challenged American's to rise to the challenge, to take on a great cause. And we failed him.

Imagine what our country would be like if we weren't spending almost a Trillion dollars a year now on imported oil. What it would be like if we got 20% of our electricity from solar energy. Imagine how many jobs would have been created selling that technology to other nations instead of us buying it from Europe and China. If all of our houses and office buildings were more energy efficient and our cars got better gas mileage.

No, thats not what we did. President Carter, for many reasons, was a one term President. His successor turned back much of what President Carte had accomplished. He removed the Solar Panels from the White House roof. He stopped the next increment in Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. Like so much of his legacy, President Reagan's approach to the energy needs of this nation have left this nation with a huge burden.

President Carter was right then, we just didn't listen.

And we will pay the price for our short sightedness for a long long time.

Maybe My Party is finding their Balls

2010-02-22T13:48:00.000-08:00

At least 20 Democratic Senators have signed up with using Reconciliation to pass a Public Option medical plan with a simple majority of votes in the Senate. Imagine that, being able to pass laws using a simple majority vote.

For all the pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth, I have yet to hear a fact based argument against creating a publicly chartered health insurance company to complete with the private companies that currently provide health care to those of us who can afford health insurance.

I love it.

Doing something good for the country based on a majority vote.

President Obama the Socialist

2010-02-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

Will/Can anyone explain to me what President Obama has proposed or done that qualifies him as a socialist?

They say its not true

2010-02-11T18:11:00.000-08:00

I was just watching Greta Van Susteren interview Rep John Boehner.
He repeated the Republican lie that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (otherwise known as the Stimulus Bill) did not work.
I don't generally get into discussions about economic statistics since the numbers can be awfully slippery.

But the stimulus bill worked and everybody who has studied it knows that it worked

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jan/27/barack-obama/obama-claims-two-million-more-americans-would-be-u/

This is the Politifact.org article addressing the President's State of the Union claim that the Stimulus Bill had created or saved 2 million jobs. As the article points out, you can argue the statistics whether the Stimulus bill created 800,000 jobs or 2 million jobs. I personally would have been happier if he had chosen a more middle of the estimates number like 1.6 million but the President wanted to put as good a face on the Stimulus Bill as possible so he used the 2 million number.

But all the estimates agree.

The Stimulus Bill worked

It put people back to work.

It saved jobs

It kept the unemployment rate from going higher

It helped to stimulate the economy.

IT WORKED

Did it work perfectly?? Certainly not. But there is no real argument that it worked.

Yet Republicans like Rep Boehner keep repeating the same lie. Some Republican Senator (I think it was Judd Gregg) claimed that the Stimulus Bill had not created even one job. Clearly either a lie or a statement by a US Senator who is completely uninformed.

I have been accused on this blog of whining.

I guess that is true.

Republicans uniformly opposed the Stimulus Bill, but many Republicans have been more than happy to pose for pictures trying to take credit for stimulus spending in their Districts or States.

Racheal Maddow did a great segment on Republicans who proposed or supported legislation (like a Bi-Partisan Debt Commission or Pay as you Go) but then turned against it when the President supported it.

Some Republicans continue to refer to President Obama as a Socialist without being able to point to anything that he has done or proposed the is even vaguely socialist.

Republicans complain that FBI agents read the Underwear Bomber his rights and that the Justice Department plans on trying him in US District Court without acknowledging the HUNDREDS of terrorists (including the Shoe Bomber) that were tried in US District Court under the Bush Administration. Somehow now that we have a Democratic President, trying terrorists in US District Court is a threat to our nation and proves that the President is not serious about fighting terrorism.

On almost every issue that we are facing, Republicans have chosen to simply lie in their opposition to what ever the President proposes.

They lie compulsively about the cost and deficit impact of the Health Care bills before Congress

They lie repeatedly about the potential costs to the American Public of the proposed Cap and Trade legislation.

They lie about his prosecution of the war on Terror/Al Queda.

I suspect that our President would welcome an honest debate on any of these issues. But Republicans aren't interested in honest debate.

The percentage of Americans who support the currently proposed Health Care Reform legislation continues to drop largely due to the incessant stream of lies told by Republicans. Despite that, most Americans, when asked about specific provisions of the Health Care Bill support the vast bulk of those provisions.

http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/upload/8042-F.pdf

Barack Obama has not done as good a job as I would have liked in selling his programs, particularly Health Care and Cap and Trade. But he is largely constrained by the facts. Republicans don't seem to have that constraint.

I guess I am just whining. But I think that we, as a nation, are better served by honest debate. A consistent stream of lies isn't part of that honest debate.

Tort Reform revisited

2010-02-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

Tort Reform, particularly malpractice tort reform, has long been a rallying cry of Conservatives/Republicans. They have repeatedly claimed that reducing or capping non-economic damages (mostly punative and pain and suffering) will have a significant impact on medical cost inflation.

And, like many arguments they have made in opposition to the President's proposed health care reform proposal and their opposition to the watered down versions that passed out of the House and Senate, these claims are exxagerated at best, down right deceptive at worst.

I had planned on presenting a unfortunately complex proposal for tort reform that protected doctors (and their insurers) who had clean records of not losing malpractice suits. It would advocate normalizing the definition of clean records by speciality since some specialities get sued far more than others. Doctors who had repeatedly lost malpractice suits would not have any limitations on punative award. Good doctors are rewarded with a level of protection, bad doctors are exposed to huge awards. It would forbid sealed judgements and would require that all settlements be reported even if they were settled out of court.

But I just don't see any need for a system that complex. The cure would be worse than the disease.

The best studies that I have seen indicate the the total cost of malpractice cases in the United States is about 1.5% of all health care costs. How ever you measure the cost of excessive awards, whatever you think that means, the vast majority of that 1.5% slice is valid and wouldn't be reduced by any of the things Republicans/Conservatives have proposed. The OMB puts the total potential savings to the US government from tort reform at $5Billion a year. Thats nice money, but a very tiny fraction of what we are spending.

There is no statistical evidence that I can find that malpractice costs are driving physicians out of the practice of medicine or driving them from high liability states to states with restricted liability.

And there is no evidence that caps on non-economic awards have actually led to reduced rates of litigation or to lower premiums for malpractice insurance.

So, unless I have got the facts wrong, what is the driver behind malpractice tort reform?

Other than protecting Insurance Company profits, what problem is tort reform trying to fix and have the caps on awards that many states have imposed on malpractice awards actually addressed those problems?

If someone can make a real fact based case for tort reform, lets see it.

But just to keep making the same old claims that aren't supported by the studies that have been done, is just another example of Conservatives/Republicans fact free arguments.

What am I missing here?

Conservatives and Facts

2010-01-28T20:45:00.000-08:00

As I have made my posts here and engaged in spirited discussions with people who had opposing opinions I have been struck by one recurring theme of these discussions.

Facts, or the lack there of.

In discussions of global warming I hear opinions. I also here non-factual statements that are not true despite the positive nature of the statement. I got told once that Global Warming was not real because mankind wasn't that powerful. My favorite is that temperature readings more than 50 or so years old are meaningless since older measurements weren't as accurate as they are now. A statement that displays such a basic lack of understanding of science and statistics as to almost disqualify the speaker from being allowed to voice an opinion on any scientific matter.

On evolution I have been told that since the theory of evolution is not perfect and because we haven't found a complete fossil record linking our ancestors to those of the great apes, that creationism is equally as valid as evolution despite the simple fact that creationism makes no scientific attempt to explain the available data.

Talking about Gay Marriage, opponents have all sorts of dire predictions about social consequences if we allow gay marriage but they have no studies or data from those places that do allow gay marriage that supports their beliefs.

One consistent refrain of conservatives and Republicans in the health care debate was that without Tort Reform the reforms would not be able to constrain health care costs. The problem is that every study I have seen shows that medical malpractice awards add something around 1.5% to health care costs and that limiting punative and non-economic damages would change that number very little. They don't mention that Texas placed significant caps on punative awards and then saw malpractice insurance rates go up even faster than before, not down as promised.

The Health Care debate has been one continuous stream of lies in attacks on the various plans, most famously the Death Panels, something the habitually fact challenged Sarah Palin continues to talk about.

I have asked Conservatives/Republicans for some facts that they wanted to brag about and tell me what great things Conservatives/Republicans have done for this country and none of them had any Conservative/Republican accomplishments to brag about.

Republicans/Conservatives advocate constantly for tax cuts as a solution for almost every problem. And they keep claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves and that they spur economic growth despite all the studies that show that tax cuts by themselves have a very small positive short term impact on growth and long term actually retard growth and never never pay for themselves.

20 years ago the same people were claiming that cigaretts weren't addictive.

The amazing thing is that Conservatives and Republicans are consistently wrong about the facts and they just don't seem to care.

Tort Reform

2010-01-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

I am looking for help
I have been doing some research on Tort Reform, particularly medical malpractice tort reform and would be very interested in any studies that any of you have seen that show that excessive medical malpractice awards are actually a significant factor in health care inflation.
I have looked and cannot find any studies that make that claim.
Can anybody help?

Thanks

An Activist Supreme Court

2010-01-21T18:14:00.000-08:00

Its funny in a twisted way.
An activist Supreme Court overturns a century of laws and previous ruling and screwed all of us.
And conservatives/Republicans seem to love it. Now corporations can spend their money without limit in direct support of the candidates of their choice.
When Barack Obama ran for President in 2008, he raised an amazing amount of money. Hundreds of millions of dollars, from millions of individual donors.
And the Supreme Court of the United States just made that into chump change. If the 10 biggest banks can give their employees 10's of Billions of dollars in bonuses, imaging how much they might be willing to spend to ensure that they are allowed to continue to make huge profits while taking ridiculous risks with other people's money.
And that's only the financial industry
Look at how much the Health Insurance industry has spent, all the while trying to hide how much they were spending, to oppose any real reform in the health insurance market.

Needless to say, I think this decision will turn out to be a disaster for this country. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Republicans and conservatives seem to love this ruling. I just wonder if now they will stop whining about activist judges.
I doubt it.

Its not the Profit Motive, its greed

2009-12-16T19:35:00.000-08:00

I have watched with growing dismay the whole health care debate.

Single Payer wasn't even on the table. It was impossible to think about taking the profit motive out of health care.

The public option was opposed, frequently by people who had taken huge sums in campaign contributions from medical insurance or pharma companies, because it would be unfair to expect private companies to compete with a government chartered non-profit.

Why is it that some seem soo determined to protect the profits of the insurance companies?

Is it because they are motivated by profit to become more responsive and efficient to their customers? Not even close. Motivated by profit they now spend more than 25% of their income on overhead, including huge salaries for top executives and huge staffs who are devoted, not to providing better care, but to denying care, to canceling insurance, to ensure that they only insure those who are very healthy.

Is it because the Insurance industry is doing ANYTHING to constrain costs?? Not even close. Health Insurance rates continue to go up 10% a year when inflation in the rest of the economy is less than 3%.

I have no objection to the profit margin. I have always worked for companies that wanted to make a profit. I have profited my self because they were able to hire me.

But is that what we have here?

Not really

Most insurance markets in this country are dominated by no more than 2 huge companies. And without competition they don't really have to compete. And they don't. So overhead costs to up and executive salaries go up and stock prices go up and the amount of money they actually spends on patient care goes down.

This isn't the profit margin

Its greed, pure and simple.

Its the same level of greed that led major banks to take ridiculous risks with our money. And when they failed horribly and brought the entire country to the brink of disaster, many of them still insisted that they deserved million dollar bonuses.

40 years ago, the average CEO made 40 times as much as their average worker. Now they make 400 times as much.

Wealth and income are now as concentrated in fewer hands than any time since the great depression. Thats not profit motive, thats just greed. When the top 1% of wage earners make more collectively than the bottom 50%, we have left the simple profit motive behind and moved into naked avarice.

The health care reform debate has been an argument between people who want to bring this great country into the company of every other industrialized nation in offering health care to EVERY CITIZEN and those who seem determined to protect the greed, pure naked greed, of the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

Its not about profit, its about greed.

And greed is winning.

Let them all expire

2009-12-06T13:02:00.000-08:00

At the end of 2010, the disastorous tax cuts proposed by President George Walker Bush are scheduled to expire.

Let them

All of them

Not just the ones affecting people who make more than $250,000.

All of them

No one likes tax increases and I am sure that there would be a huge outcry from many, mostly conservatives, at any hint of a tax increase. But the simple fact is that we need to raise taxes. Though I expect that President Obama will actually continue work of the type that happened under the Clinton administration where the size of government actually shrank, unlike under the President in between. I take the president at his word that he will only propose new spending if he could also propose ways to pay for that spending. Pay as you go is something Democrats got pretty good at under Clinton and can do again.

A return to the tax rates in place during the strongest and most prolonged expansion since the Great Depression seems like it might even lay the foundation for another period of sustained broadly shared growth, unlike the narrowly focused growth in the Bush years that literally only benefited the rich.

Let them all expire.

Arise Liberals Arise

2009-11-16T18:53:00.000-08:00

I am a Liberal
And I want others who feel like me to be proud of being a LIBERAL!!!
I look at what LIBERALS have done for this country and I am proud of LIBERALS accomplishments.
Somehow conservatives have made LIBERAL into almost a curse word
Yet its LIBERALS who have made this country what it is.
If you want to measure us in Red State, Blue State terms then do
Blue States have higher rates of High School Graduation, lower Teen Pregnancy rates, Higher percentages of College Graduates, lower Crime Rates, lower infant mortality rates, and Higher incomes.
LIBERALS live better
The states with the most uninsured - almost all Red States
The states that get more in Federal spending states than they pay in taxes - mostly Red States. The states the get less in Federal Spending than they pay in taxes - mostly Blue States
Since WWII, the economy has consistently performed better under Democratic Administrations than under Republicans
Same for the Stock Market

Arise Liberals

Take on Conservatives

Ask them what Conservatism has done for America

Ask them how Conservatives have made America better. They won't have an answer. They will only have attacks on Liberals and Democrats

Arise Liberals

Proclaim your politics
Be proud of what Liberals have done for this country

Challenge Conservatives. Ask them to show anything they have led on other than opposing things that this country needs

Ask them when was the last time Conservatives were right about anything

Arise Liberals

Be proud of what LIBERALS have done for this country

This country is a better country because of what LIBERALS have done.

Can conservatives say that. Can they tell you about all the great things they have done for this country??? No!!

Arise Liberals

Be Proud of the traditions and heritage you are inheriting

Continue to be those things that have made this country better

ARISE LIBERALS

Intolerance and Bigotry win again

2009-11-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

The voters in Maine have spoken.
Gays are just not quite as good as the rest of us.
They don't deserve the things the rest of us can count on.
Not because of what they do, but because of who they love.

Its a shame that people of "faith" see fit to demand that we all accept their world view. Based on their beliefs.

They will tell you, without any basis except their beliefs, that allowing gays to marry will destroy the social or moral fabic of our country. They can't point to any new or accelerated social or moral decay in any of the countryies that have accepted gay marriage, but they believe it so it must be true.

Some, more on the fringe, will try to claim some link between homosexuality and pedophilia, again without a shred of evidence, but that is their belief and we all ahve to live by their beliefs.

This is an issue of civil rights. Pure and Simple. People are being denied access to the civil contract purely and simply because of who they love. And no one who supports this discrimination can come up with one defendable reason for their discrimination. All they have is their beliefs that homosexuality is some how bad or gross or an abomination. And they demand the right to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.

I would be outraged if I wasn't so depressed by it all.

The Good War?

2009-10-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

The President has been involved in protracted deliberations over the strategy needed in Afghanistan. Amazingly, former Vice President Cheney has chosen to criticize the President for being deliberate in his decisions. Amazing criticism from a man who encouraged his President into making a huge string of strategic mistakes, from the conduct of the war in Afghanistan during the Bush Administration, to invading Iraq, to the general tenor of our foreign policy to idiotic and disastrous domestic policies to participating in the outing of a covert CIA officer.

That rant aside, the President has an incredibly tough decision to make.

Like much of what he inherited, President is faced with a range of shitty options, none of whom hold great promise.

Withdrawal on some sort of timetable and leaving the Afghanistani's to their own devices would be terribly difficult to sell politically even if he wasn't already in the middle of two other very important political debates.

Keep with the current force levels and strategy. Probably the one choice no one is advocating.

Bulk up our forces by 40,000 or more troops to expand the current strategy of take, hold, and build that was the concept behind his first troop increase in March. Basically doubling down on his earlier strategy.

Shift the focus from anti-insurgency and nation building implicit in take, hold, and build to a focused anti-terrorist strategy that utilizes special forces and targeted munitions to target Al Queda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and essentially withdraw from the Afghani civil war.

There may be other options, these are the ones I have heard of.

And they are all terrible options.

Any strategy that is focused on building the institutions and military structure of the Afghani government in Kabul runs headlong into the debilitating corruption of the Karzi government. And there is no real evidence that his opponent in the upcoming runoff will be any less corrupt. And this is why any strategy built on nation building in Afghanistan begins to look and feel more and more like Vietnam. And that image scares me.

I don't know how different a strategic picture we would be seeing in Afghanistan if the Bush Administration had not screwed the pooch so completely, but we may now be at the point where the Taliban cannot be defeated. They have used money and what almost looks like effective governance to establish a very strong position in much of the country. And they can easily present us as invaders and occupiers and history shows that Afghanistan is not kind to invaders and occupiers. And what passes for a central government in Kabul is riddled with corruption and ineptitude. How can we try to build a nation based on that central government? Though it would be easy to criticize President Bush for picking Karzai, I don't know of any other Afghani leader who could have been effective at creating a national government in a nation that has never really had one. If there is a leader who would not be corrupt himself and who could create a government largely free of corruption, I have not heard his name.

Take, hold, and build might possibly work if we could bring in enough troops and keep them there long enough, but the more troops we bring in, the more we look like occupiers. The longer we stay, the more we look like occupiers. The more we support a corrupt central government the more we look like occupiers.

I supported President Obama in the election and I supported his decision to increase our force level in Afghanistan early in his Presidency. Now I am not so sure.

Increasingly I believe it’s time for us to accept that we cannot enforce our will on Afghanistan. Maybe we never could have. Maybe even if the Bush Administration had focused on Afghanistan from the beginning it would still look the same, I don't know.

But I don't see any good outcome here. We will continue to lose good men and women fighting a war trying to build a stable nation in Afghanistan and I don't see any realistic way for us to succeed. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan doesn't really have any history of central governance. It has always been a tribal society where people are far more faithful their faith and their tribe than to their nation. Can come together and stop fighting each other when the need to deal with invaders and occupiers, but they don't see themselves as a nation. Afghanistan is, after all, a nation created by western colonial powers drawing lines on a map that had little or nothing to do with reality on the ground.

We have screwed up here. We gleefully helped the Afghani people defeat the Soviets. The Soviets pulled out and the first Bush Administration patted itself on the back and walked away from a country we helped break. Maybe if we had stayed then, maybe if we had worked with the Pakistani's and the Afghani's to build civil structures and build infrastructure that would give people other options than growing poppies, maybe it might have worked then. My natural inclination is that since we broke it, we have to fix it. I just don't think we can.

We need to be finding a way out. Sooner rather than later.

What has conservativism done for you??

2009-10-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

Really!
Conservatives gave us record deficits and an illegal invasion of a country that wasn't a threat to us and the deepest recession in 70 years and maniacs shooting doctors.

So what have conservatives done in the past 40 years to make the lives of anyone who isn't rich better?

The opposed the Clean Air Act and The Clean Water Act and the EPA and Medicare and Clinton's tax increases (which only set the stage for the greatest expansion in a century or more). They deregulated banks which led directly to the current recession. They have lied about climate change/global warming for at least 15 years and stopped us from taking on the most important challenge this world faces right now. They insisted that the federal government should intervene in private medical decisions made by a grieving husband in Florida after illegally disenfranchising thousands of (mostly minority) voters just before the 2000 election. They have spent the past 6 month lying about health care reform, especially the public option.

They have opposed every increase in the minimum wage despite all the evidence that it actually benefits people and doens't actually lead to job losses.

Proposition 13 in California lowered people's property taxes and eviserated public education in that state.

So really, what positive thing for the majorit of American's have conservatives accomplished in the past 30 or 40 years??

Anything??

Religious Conservatives

2009-10-13T18:15:00.000-07:00

I was on my standard 600 mile drive yesterday and surfing the radio (CD player is broken). I came upon the President speaking to some enthusiastic crowd so I stopped surfing and listened.

Our President was addressing a rally on the mall for Gay Rights. And the President was telling these Americans that he supported some of their causes. That he supported the Repeal of DOMA. That he supported the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. The crowd was going nuts.

It sounded like a really good speech.

After it ended, some guy named John came on. He was absolutely horrified that President Obama had ended his speech to a group of Americans with "God Bless America!". How dare the President support people who were gay!!!!

John then went on to talk about how Homosexuality was an abomination and a sin and a really nasty thing. And then he opened the phone lines and caller after caller came on to say that this was a horrible thing.

And in the middle of this there was an ad.

The ad was for some group supporting Christians in some country who are being persecuted by Muslims simply because they are Christians and the Muslims are trying to impose Shiara Law.

And I thought, how much the same those Religious Conservatives were.

They both cherry pick from their holy books to support their beliefs that other people are evil or sick or depraved or just infidels.

And they both want to make their vision of right and wrong into the law.

They pick and choose from their holy books what they want to read and ignore the rest and then claim some sort of moral high ground because they are just doing what their holy book tells them to do. At least the part of their holy book that they choose to emphasize.

And in many Muslim countries, the conservatives are winning and women are being forced under the veil and Christians are presecuted and harrassed.

And here, in the Land of the Free, there is a powerful push to repeal the law in New Hampshire to ban Same Sex Marriage. Not because there is any evidence that Gay Marriage is bad for anybody. Not because there is any evidence that allowing lesbian couples the same benefits as straight couples does society any harm. There isn't any evidence because allowing two people who love each other to marry turns out to be a good thing for society. But they oppose it because the parts of the bible they choose to read tell them its an abomination.

And they think their opinion should be law.

What, really, is the difference between these two groups of religious conservatives?

President Obama, Nobel Laurete

2009-10-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

Amazing
Just Amazing
I personally think its too soon. I suspect that he would have eventually won the Peace Prize. In many ways this is because he has approached the world in such fundamentally different ways than his predecessor. And that, by itself, may be sufficient justification for this honor. Our President, the President of the most powerful country in the world, has let the world know that we are no longer the nation of our way or the highway. Taht we recognize that are a force for good in the world, but that we are occasionally a force for evil as well, that we stand a far better chance of achieving our goals with we approach the rest of the world with respect, not derision.
Just Amazing

The President Spoke

2009-09-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

I just hope the people listened
And got past the constant din of lies told by Insurance Company lackeys, in Congress and out.

He laid out as clearly as he could what he wants and made it clear that he will not accept a plan the doesn't include some form of competition in the insurance market.

And he made it clear that he will call a lie a lie

It won't stop the lies, some Republican's can't seem to control themselves, but it will put clearly for those who will listen the truth about what is being proposed.

I loved it.

Public Discourse

2009-08-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

As a life long liberal the on-going debate about health care has been frustrating.
Anyone who knows me know I love a good debate.
And I try to be straight with my facts.

And I find it incredibly frustrating when the people I am debating don't seem to care about facts or truth.

As an pundit inside the beltway will tell you, support for health care reform and for a public option has dropped.
And it has. But why??
Not because the opponents have many facts, but because the insist on lying and then when their first lie is disproven moving on to a new lie.

Death Panels
The VA manual that supposedly supports suicide or euthanasia
Now Rush is claiming that the new bill mandates circumscision
And it will ration health care
And the public option will put all the private insurance companies out of business
And health care reform will strip so much money away from Medicare that seniors will be denied care

And those are just the ones that come to mind now.

But real debate is being drowned out by lies
By lies shouted out by angry people in town halls who more interested in being disruptive and angry than in actually asking real questions and getting real answers.

There are lots of things in Health Care reform to debate
Tort Reform?
Philosophically, SHOULD the government compete with private industry?
Will a public option really help to constrain costs?
Will effectiveness studies really help to constrain costs and improve care?
Can we really significantly reduce the fraud and waste in the Medicare system?
Should small and mid-sized employers be required to provide Health Insurance for all their employees
Should we require all citizens and legal residents to have health insurance?

There are real issues to debate.

But the opponents of Health Care Reform don't really seem interested in debate.
They feel more comfortable in lies and shouting and disruption.

I find it all so frustrating

Learning the Wrong Lesson

2009-07-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

I was listening to Morning Joe as they were going on and on about how horrible it was for the CIA that, yet again, they violated the law. This time by not informing Congress of a on-going program.
According to reports based on leaks and anonymous sources, the CIA had a program in place to insert assassination squads into different places to go after senior Al Queda operatives that we could not get other ways or that we could get by bombing but only at the cost of lost of civilian casualties as collateral damage.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but sending somebody out to put a bullet in Osama Bin Laden's head strikes me as a good idea. I don't know that anyone of the 8 members of Congress that the CIA is supposed to notify about this program would have had any objections to hunting down and killing senior Al Queda personnel if we didn't think we could capture them or kill them by other means.
I think it s good idea.
So we had this program though, according to the reports, we never actually sent a team anywhere to carry out these target killing/assassinations. Not because we didn't want to, but it just never came together well enough to risk the assets.
But instead of notifying Congress, as they are required to do by law, the previous administration decided to ignore law and never informed Congress.
Both Democrats and Republicans have stated, without acknowledging the content of the published reports, that Congress should have been notified.
So Bush/Cheney/the CIA collectively broke the law.
And that violation of the law now appears to have been exposed.
And what do we hear from Conservatives all over the place??
OHHHHH PITY THE CIA.
Exposing this operation and talking about investigations into potential violations of the law is bad for morale at the CIA.
Is that really the lesson here??
The Attorney General is considering appointing a Special Prosecutor to investigate if some CIA Operatives or their Contractors didn't exceed the written guidance that they had for the treatment of prisoners in our custody.
He is not investigating if the CIA followed the rules laid down in the noxious torture memos, he is considering and investigation into whether or not even those rules were violated.
And again we are supposed to pity the CIA???
WHY???
In all the noise about the assassination program, I have heard few voices say this is a bad thing. We already kill them from the air with 500 pound bombs or Hellfire missiles, this is different only in that shooting a terrorist is far more personal than dropping high explosives on their ass. But the terrorists are still dead.
What the CIA and the Bush Administration did is break the law by not informing Congress.
The lesson here is not that we will destroy the effectiveness of the CIA by exposing their crimes, its that WE DON'T WANT THE CIA TO BREAK OUR LAWS.
We are after all, a nation of laws.
Why should I feel sorry for the CIA when they get caught breaking the law???
Can anybody explain this?

Single Payer and Poster Children

2009-07-07T18:35:00.000-07:00

In the past week or so Senator Mitch McConnel has been telling the story of a Canadian woman who ended up getting treatment (at her own cost) at a facility here in the United States because she would have had to wait months to see the needed specialists in Canada under their Single Payer system
Senator McConnel is using this woman's story as a cautionary tale about the failures of Single Payer and why we cannot possibly adopt anything close to that here.
I won't pretend to understand what happened in this woman's case that caused the delays.
What I do know is that this failure in the Canadian system is relatively rare.
A good friend of mine is Canadian. Her mother was ill with a serious disease and a shortage of the appropriate specialist resulted in her recieving treatment in the US - paid for by the Canadian Single Payer system.
The Canadian Single Payer model is not perfect.
But Senator Mitch McConnell has a good Poster Child for his case.
I have 47 million.
What ever the weaknesses in the Canadian system, the Canadian system covers EVERYONE IN CANADA. No one in Canada has to rely solely on the Emergency Room for their only medical care, and then only when they are really sick. No one in Canada has to go into Bankruptcy because of their medical bills.
Senator McConnell and the Republicans point out that the Canadian system is not perfect.
DUHHHH!!!!
What a newsflash. The Canadians don't have a perfect system.
But for far less money per person than we spend, the Canadians have longer life spans, lower rates of infant mortality, and universal coverage.
He has his poster child
I have 47 million uninsured poster children.

Shared Resources

2009-07-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

My Sister and I talk about a lot of stuff and agree about a little. I love the conversations because she not only knows what she believes, as most of us do, but she is able to describe why, which many on both sides seem incapable of.
I don't know how but we ended up talking about water policy. She lives along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, which is actually quite arid. Her water supply is almost completely dependent on the Spring snow melt. So if they get lots of snow in the mountains, their reservoirs fill up and if the snow fall is low the reservoirs don't fill up. Colorado recently went through a drought that lasted about 5 years, during which many of the reservoirs got quite low.
At some point during this drought, the water department instituted restrictions on water usage including limitations on watering the yard and using a running hose to wash your car. In talking about that period, she noted that some of her neighbors ignored the water restrictions and watered their yard anyway.
Later in the drought, the water department abandoned the restrictions and went to a tiered cost structure so people who used lots of water payed a significantly higher rate/gallon than those who only used a small amount of water.
To my sister, that was the right way to resolve the problem of water usage during a drought. If you can afford the higher bills, then use all the water you want in any way you want. I guess you could call it a market based solution as opposed to a regulatory solution.
I thought about that conversation alot. It seems to me to be an almost perfect metafor for one of the core differences between Republicans/Conservatives and Democrats/Liberals.
We all have to share the same environment.
And just because you can afford the gasoline/natural gas/electric bill/water doesn't mean that profligate use of those shared resources is actually good for society as a whole.
Now my sister personally recycles virtually everything she can. She has been known to wash and reuse ziplock bags. They have converted a large chunk of their yard to lower water demand plants and have a sprinkler system that makes more efficient use of the water they do use. She doesn't use the dry cycle on her diswasher, saving about 40% of the energy the system would otherwise use. She has a compost heap. All in all, she leads a pretty green lifestyle. As is her choice.
But she has no problem with those that are willing to waste our shared resources.
If they can afford what they use, then thats up to them.
Which is pretty much the Republican position on things like the environment.
If you can afford an Escalade or a 4.5L V-8 pickup, then have at it, the environment will take care of itself. Interfering in the market by Cap and Trade on Carbon emissions, or raising the CAFE standards, or making the CAFE standards apply to pickup trucks, or requiring that a growing percentage of the cars/power plants/factories produce less or even zero carbon emissions is usually defined as a bad idea gaurenteed to make America less competitive in the world and lose jobs.
The problem with their arguments is that everytime they have made similar arguments (against the Clean Air Act, or the Clean Water Act, or against the original CAFE Standards, they have been wrong. The world didn't end, the economy didn't collapse.
But because of their resistance to such things, we now have giant dead zones in the ocean and in the Chesapeake Bay where run off from non-point sources is killing entire water ecosystems. We have human accelerated global warming that literally theartens the lives of millions of people world wide.
And we are facing water crises. Much of California gets its water from snow melt, like Colorado. And snow fall in California has been decreasing and will likely continue to decrease as the climate warms up. The agricultural miracle that is California's Central Valley cannot exist without huge water projects bringing water from the mountains of Northern California. California's population continues to grow and the pressure on the limited water resources of the Sierra is growing as snow fall appears to be decreasing.
As a Liberal/Democrat, I think it is not only a good idea for the government to interfere in the water and carbon markets, I think it is absolutely necessary for our continued health and prosperity.
Left to their own devices, the markets won't solve these problems, despite what Conservatives/Republican try to tell us.
Just because you can afford to use lots of a shared resource, doesn't mean you should, nor does it mean you should be allowed to waste just because you can afford it.

Is this really news?

2009-07-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

When so much is happening in the world, why is it breathlessly awaited breaking news that Michael Jackson's will has been filed with the courts.
Its not like that is a suprise or unusual or even really interesting
I know there is a 24 hour news cycle now, but is the sad passing of such a sad character really the most important thing that has happened this past week.
He was an amazingly talented and equally flawed man who let his life get away from him.
But is this really headline news?

Gays in the Military, the Insanity Continues

2009-06-30T20:09:00.000-07:00

If there is a poster child for the utter insanity of Don't Ask Don't Tell, it's Lt Dan Choi. A decorated veteran of Iraq who recently came out of the closet. A military panel has recommended that he be discharged from the National Guard despite NO EVIDENCE THAT HIS SEXUAL ORIENTATION IS PREJUDICIAL TO GOOD ORDER AND DISCIPLINE. And, Oh By The Way, he is an Arab linguist, somehting the military has a distinct sortage of. So we continue to pursue a utterly mindless policy based on old prejudices that most members of the military no longer care about and that have cost us the patriotic services of more than 12,000 patriotic Americans who wanted to do the PATRIOTIC thing and serve their country in the military. This is insanity beyond description. Don't Ask, Don't Tell IS HARMING OUR NATIONAL SECURITY.

Gays in the Military, This Insanity has to stop

2009-06-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

If there is a poster child for the utter insanity of Don't Ask Don't Tell, its Lt Dan Choi.

A decorated veteran of Iraq who recently came out of the closet.

A military panel has recommended that he be discharged from the National Guard despite NO EVIDENCE THAT HIS SEXUAL ORIENTATION IS PREJUDICIAL TO GOOD ORDER AND DISCIPLINE.

And, Oh By The Way, he is an Arab linguist, something the military has a distinct shortage of.

So we continue to pursue a utterly mindless policy based on old prejudices that most members of the military no longer care about and that have cost us the patriotic services of more than 12,000 patriotic Americans who wanted to do the PATRIOTIC thing and serve their country in the military.

This is insanity beyond description.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell IS HARMING OUR NATIONAL SECURITY.

Public Option might be TOOOO successful??

2009-06-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

Listening to the Sunday Talkies its clear, one of the biggest concerns that Republicans talk about when voicing opposition to having a public option is that IT WILL WORK TOO WELL. That so many people will chose this option that it will hurt the insurance industry.
Some refer to it as the nose under the tent flap for Single Payer.

That's right!!! They oppose a public option, not because it won't work. Not because it will cost too much. Not because the government cannot possibly efficiently deliver health insurance.

Nope

They oppose it BECAUSE IT MIGHT WORK!!!

And, oh by the way, it might actually work to hold down health care costs across the board.

How horrible would it be if the government offered its citizens something that they want and that works and that helps to reduce costs???

Whose side are they on??

Clearly not on the side of all those people they think might chose the public option.

They are on the Insurance Company's side.

We have a health care crisis in this country and the Republicans demand is that we protect the profits of the insurance companies.

Healthcare

2009-06-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

There is a huge debate underway in the halls of Congress over the future of the American Health care system.
And despite large majorities in both Houses of Congress, the Democrats are loosing.
Sometimes I despair for my party.
Though it is clear to me that some form of Single Payer is far and away the best answer for this nation, that is an option that is not even being considered.
Sigh
The battle in Congress is largely over two issues. Including a public option and how to pay the $100 - $160B/year that this program will cost us.
Despite several polls showing very widespread public acceptance for a Public Option and a strong majority who are willing to pay more taxes in order to finance this system, some Democrats (including the the Blue Dogs) are blocking a public option. Listening to the debate I hear Republicans (and some Democrats) mouthing the same old tired attacks on a public option.
They ask if Americans want a bureaucrat standing between them and their doctors. The sad fact is that for most Americans there already is a bureaucrat standing between them and their doctors. The current bureaucrat works for an Insurance Company and that bureaucrats job is to protect the profits of the Insurance Company. I some how do not see that as any better than a bureaucrat who works for the US Government in the same role. In fact, since the Federal bureaucrat isn't focused on protecting any Insurance Company's profits, they might be more responsive to the needs of the patient and the decisions of the doctors.
For years Republicans have stated as if it were a fact that private industry can always do things better than a government entity. Yet now they are publicly worried that many people might leave private insurance for the government run insurance program. Why would they do that if the private insurers could do a better job?? Just look at how well Medicare is managed and what its administrative overhead costs are compared to the inefficiencies and bloated salaries and administrative overhead costs of private insurers. There are some things governments can do well and this looks like it might be one of them.
One of the elements of President Obama's proposal is a structure that studies medical methods and outcomes and costs and looks for ways to maximize positive outcomes while reducing costs. Though no one has proposed imposing the results of these studies on anybody, Republicans have twisted this into a government plan to ration care in some way. Its a lie but Republicans do seem to like their lies.
One thing that is lost in the current rhetoric is that the current system is financially unsustainable. Its not just that Medicare will grow to consume the entire federal budget, its that private citizens and employers will no longer be able to afford to provide quality care. There is tremendous waste and duplication and conflict of interest in the current system. Administrative overhead consumes about 30% of every health care dollar. (as an aside, overhead in Medicare is far far lower at about 5%). We have well over 1000 insurance companies along with hundreds of thousands of providers of medical services. Yet with all that supposed competition duplication and waste and inefficiency and costs continue to rise far faster than inflation. Without at least a public option, it may not be possible to get control of costs and without getting control of costs the question of who pays the bills is almost meaningless.
The current health care system in this country is a national disgrace. We have the best, most advanced, most successful health care in the world, if you can afford it. But we pay way too much for what we get. We pay 20%/person more than the second most expensive country and 50% more than the 3rd most expensive country and yet we have a shorter life expectancy that most industrialized nations, we have higher rates of infant mortality that any other industrialized nation, and we still have 50 million people in this country that do not have any health insurance at all. 62% of all Bankruptcies are partially or completely the result of medical bills and 2/3rds of those medical related bankruptcies involve people WHO HAVE health insurance. No other industrialized nation on earth would tolerate such an outrage.
And Republicans (with some Democrats) don't seem to really want to change anything.
We are facing a crisis.
And it doesn't look like we are going in the right direction.

The Reagan Legacy

2009-06-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

I was amused to watch the unveiling of Ronald Reagan's statue in the Capitol Rotunda.
Republicans, in particular, were almost worshipful of President Reagan
I thought that was a perfect illustration of where the Republican party is now.
Reagan changed politics in America in fundamental ways, none of them good.
He brought the concept that tax cuts by them selves were good into the public stage and Republicans have embraced that idiocy ever since. Tax Cuts unmatched by spending cuts DO NOT stimulate the economy long term. They have a clear short term stimulative affect, the same as increasing domestic spending (President Obama's stimulus package is a clear example). The problem with tax cuts it they tend to be permanent while spending increases tend to be temporary.
Shrub got a supposedly temporary tax cut passed and then immediately started campaigning to make it permanent. Those tax cuts never paid for themselves. Reagan's tax cuts never paid for them selves. At least Reagan (and Bush 41) acknowledged that and put forward huge tax increases to keep the budget from going completely out of control. Shrub never got the idea that huge deficits are fundamentally bad for the economy long term.
President Reagan famously said that government wasn't the solution, it was the problem. Another idiocy that has been enthusiastically embraced by the Republican party. That led to deregulating the S&L industry and the resulting S&L bailout. That led to the breakdown of barriers between commercial and investment banks and was a major contributor to the current near depression. Regulation is neither inherently good or bad. Its a tool. History has repeatedly demonstrated that unconstrained capitalism is destructive of society, the cycles of boom and bust hurt far more than they help. But, following Reagan, Republicans still believe in this silly mantra of deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. Without thought or balance, just deregulate.
President Reagan gave us Star Wars, a hole into which we have dumped hundreds of billions of wasted dollars that might succeed in protecting us from North Korea or Iran, but would be utterly useless in protecting us from a nation with more than 10 or 15 weapons. And would be completely useless in protecting us from the stolen nuc smuggled into this country in a shipping container.
And that doesn't even get into Iran-Contra
I know Republicans (and some Democrats) worship at Reagan's feet.
But its time to stop
Time for a rational reexamination of the Reagan legacy for the disaster it was.
I do not believe that History will be kind to Reagan
Nor should it be.

Gays in the Military

2009-05-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

It's time to acknowledge the obvious.
We already have gay people in the military. We always have.
And despite that I have never heard of one report of some sort of gay related wave of sexual harassment or inappropriate interest.
What I hear is that the troops might not like it.
There's lots of talk about good order and discipline and unit cohesiveness.
And some talk about troops in some communal shower being worried that a fellow soldier/sailor is checking out their ass.
It's like they have no memory.
In 1947 President Truman ignored similar advice and ordered the Armed Forces to become racially integrated. And they did. It wasn't perfectly done. Racism exists in society so it exists in the military. But by all accounts, the Armed Forces did a pretty good job of forcing those whites in the service who didn't want serve with blacks as equals to either accept it or get out.
And it worked.
I remember growing up as an Air Force brat seeing people living together is something approaching harmony. It was clear that, no matter what a person might think, active overt racism was not acceptable any more. I was a kid, I am sure that there were things that happened that I didn't hear about. But by the time I joined the Navy, race was much less a factor in the Armed Services than in the population at large. We weren't that far from a black man as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
When I joined the Navy (1976) we were going through much of the same thing as women were more fully integrated into the Armed Services. They were serving on other than hospital ships in almost every speciality. They were flying fighter aircraft. Many similar arguments were made about integrating women then as they are making about integrating gays now. There were concerns that men and women would form relationships and those relationships were interfere with good order and discipline. That debate goes on since we still don't have women serving in infantry units, but almost all the disasters predicted by those opposed to what integration we have achieved didn't happen. There were incidents like Tailhook, where some people failed to recognize that the world had changed. But over a fairly short period of time, those problems mostly disappeared.
And now we are discussing acknowledging what is already true and contemplating stopping the insanity of punishing people purely for being gay. The utter stupidity of telling honorable patriotic Americans that they are not good enough to serve in the Armed Forces of this country simply because of who they love.
We hear much the same arguments we heard about blacks and about women and those arguments then were wrong and the arguments now will also be wrong.
How/Why is it defendable to allow some people's prejudice to determine that some other Americans aren't good enough to serve?

The world is full of Irony

2009-04-24T06:04:00.000-07:00

"Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere... I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture."-- George W. Bush, June 2003

The Rest of the Story on Torture

2009-04-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

I was delighted that President Obama backed away from his statement that there would be no torture related prosections by deferring to the professional prosecutors in the Department of Justice.
The good guys won one today.
And then we here from a report from the Senate Armed Services Committee what almost seems like the real reason for the harsh interrogations and torture.
The Bush Administration, according to this report, was intent on proving a link between Al Queda and Saddam Hussein.
Is this why we waterboarded one man 183 times in 4 months? To prove what wasn't true. What we knew wasn't true before we invaded Iraq.
Bybee should be impeached and there are people who should go to jail.
I don't know if even teh Bybee memo should shield people who waterboarded 1 prisoner 183 times in 4 months.
All in an attempt to prove a lie
Utterly depressing

Open Letter to the President of the United States

2009-04-17T20:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President,
I was relieved that your Department of Justice chose to release the memos written under the Bush Administration that authorized and justified torture.
I am also very happy that you have issued an Executive Order that requires that the CIA follow the Army Field Manual strictures on interrogation of suspected terrorists.
That being said, I find that I must disagree with you in the strongest of terms, when you and the Attorney General have granted effective immunity to the CIA case officers and the contractors working for them that, in the name of the United States, tortured prisoners in our custody.
As you are well aware, torture is prohibited by both US Law and treaties that the US has signed.
You do not have the authority under our Constitution, to decide not to allow prosecution of people that might have broken both US and International law. We, as a nation, share responsibility for these crimes, but we cannot use our collective guilt to shield the individual guilt of those who justified torture, or those who authorized torture, or those who actually tortured prisoners in our custody.
I call upon you to direct the Attorney General to appoint a special counsel, similar to the special counsel appointed to investigate the disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity, to investigate and prosecute as necessary the allegations that representatives of the United States Government justified, authorized, or actually committed acts of torture on prisoners in our custody, either in acknowledged locations like Abu Grahib or Guantanamo Bay or the "Black" prisons reportedly operated by the CIA.
We are a nation of laws. It is important, even critical, for us as a people and a nation to acknowledge the crimes that were committed in our name and to prosecute those who are involved.
Personally I would suspect that most juries would acquit the actual torturers because of the thin film of cover provided by the Justice Department decisions, and would (hopefully) convict those who justified and authorized actions that, despite the Justice Department decisions, were so clearly violations of US and International Law
I supported you because I hoped/thought/prayed that you really were different, that you really would take on the hard things. There is no doubt this is a hard thing.
But it is necessary that we acknowledge our mistakes and prosecute those responsible for committing acts of torture. It is necessary for us to restore our moral standing in the world to admit our mistakes and correct them.
I remain excited about almost all of what you are doing.
On this though, I beg you to reconsider your position, hard as I know that to be, and enforce the law. Let the chips fall where they may.
Thank you
Walt Stoelting

Republicans and Democrats

2009-04-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

I just got spanked. This was a lousy post, making claims I can't adequately support. Sorry

I will leave it up with this apology for a while then just take the whole thing down

Universal Health Care

2009-04-14T16:47:00.000-07:00

Preview of Coming Attractions in Washington DC.The debate over health care.The President has pointed out (correctly) that the most important step that his administration can take to reign in long term government spending is to control the cost of health care. Far more than Social Security (which may or may not have liquidity problems long term depending on who you ask), Medicare, with health care costs in general, is growing at a pace that is clearly unsustainable.There are two Frontline articles that I recommend to everyone.Sick in America (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/) examines the weaknesses and inefficiencies in our current system of paying for health care that rely in large part of for profit insurance companies. Sick Around the World (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/)examines how 5 different capitalist countries addressed the issue of universal care. Of note, none of those systems allow for profit health insurance companies in their basic care programs.
Somewhat lost in the debate about how to achieve universal health care is the issue of cost. If we cannot find a way to reign in the growth in health care costs, who pays for health care will really be a moot issue, no one will be able to afford it.To his credit, President Obama has recognized that critical fact and is trying to make it a central part of the move towards universal care.
It is a national embarrassment that the Richest and Most Powerful nation in the world has 50 million people without health insurance (I am currently one of them).
Finding ways to control costs and ensure that everyone has access to the full range of health care (not just the emergency room) is perhaps the most important thing we can do for our future financial success.
Let the debating begin.

Universal Health Care

2009-04-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

Preview of Coming Attractions in Washington DC.

The debate over health care.

The President has pointed out (correctly) that the most important step that his administration can take to reign in long term government spending is to control the cost of health care. Far more than Social Security (which may or may not have liquidity problems long term depending on who you ask), Medicare, with health care costs in general, is growning at a pace that is clearly unsustaninable.

There are two Frontline articles that I recommend to everyone.

Sick in America (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/) examines the weaknesses and inefficiences in our current system of paying for health care that rely in large part of for profit insureance companies

Sick Around the World (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/)examines how 5 different capitalist countries addressed the issue of universal care. Of note, none of those systems allow for profit health insurance companies in their basic care programs.

Somewhat lost in the debate about how to acheive universal health care is the issue of cost. If we cannot find a way to reign in the growth in health care costs, who pays for health care will really be a moot issue, no one will be able to afford it.

To his credit, President Obama has recognized that critical fact and is trying to make it a central part of the move towards universal care.

It is a national embarrasement that the Richest and Most Powerful nation in the world has 50 million people without health insurance (Until recently, I was one of them)

Sad and Pathetic

2009-04-14T16:20:00.001-07:00

Is a measure of how clueless the Republican Party is that they continue to use the courts to delay the certification of Al Franken as the duly elected Senator from Minnesota.
Its clear from the statements made by the Senate Republican leadership that they are encouraging the endless delays purely to prevent the Democrats from seating their 59th Senator.
The initial returns on election day gave Norm Coleman a slight lead. He immediately called on Al Franken to concede and respect the will of the people. Now that the required recount is complete and Franken has a small lead, Coleman and his supporters have turned to the courts to try to claim some sort of malfeasance. At each stage of their appeals, Al Franken has actually gained votes. They have already promised to take their case to the state Supreme Court and are openly talking about taking their case to the Federal Courts as some sort of civil rights case.
This is all the Republican's seem to have left.
This and their silly Tea Parties
Sad kind of
I like it though. Another sign that they have no leader, no real vision, no unifying purpose (other than obstructing the President's agenda)
RIP GOP

The beginning of the End for Discrimination in Marriage

2009-04-08T14:41:00.001-07:00

Two milestones occurred that probably mark the beginning of the end for the laws that deny gays equal protection under our laws.
The Vermont legislature passed a law allowing any two adults to marry, regardless of their gender. They then had to override the Governor's veto.
The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the law that denied gays access to the civil contract called marriage was unconstitutional. And they did so unanimously.

The laws denying gays the equal protection of the law have never made any logical sense. Every time I have this discussion with people who oppose gay marriage the only real substantive reason they have is because they disapprove of homosexuality. They no longer try to show how society will be harmed in any real way, they just know in their heart of hearts that homosexuality is wrong and gay marriage should not be allowed.

I think we have reached a tipping point. This is like the Battle of Midway in World War II. We haven't won the war yet, but the opponents of gay rights are on the defensive now and they will eventually lose.

Its a great day to be an American, Gay or Straight.

Silly Lies

2009-02-27T12:32:00.001-08:00

You have to love this.

Governor Jindall, in his response to the President's address to the nation, told this cute/funny story about some mindless bureaucrat trying to stop boats from coming into New Orleans to help rescue people off of roof tops because they didn't have registration.

He told it like he was there.

Turns out he wasn't.

After 8 years of a President who frequently said things that were not true, that he should have known were not true, now we have the official spokesman of the Republican Party making up a story for his national address.

The number and frequency with which Republicans have said things about the Stimulus package that were simply and clearly untrue is quite breathtaking.

Thank god for sites like FactCheck.Org and PolitiFact.com

These are serious times and there are real disagreements between the parties. For reasons passing understanding it seems like Republicans can't talk about the issues and simply tell the truth.

Throwing President Bush under the Bus

2009-02-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

Its been fun in a sick way to watch how the Republican Party has thrown President Bush completely under the bus then made sure it ran over him a couple of times.
Bobby Jindall's Republican response to the President's address was only part of it.
You hear current Republican Congressmen and Senators talk like none of the excesses and stupidities of the Bush years have anything to do with them.
All of a sudden they have discovered fiscal responsibility.
Some how they were the party in power when the FEMA so completely botched its response to Hurricane Katrina.
Now that he is no longer a candidate for President of the US, Senator McCain is saying the war in Afghanistan is lost
After 8 years of Earmarks run amok, all of a sudden earmarks are evil and have to be opposed at every turn.
Fortunately, it doesn't seem that the public is buying it. Despite their lackluster performance, public approval for the Democrats in Congress is up, almost to 50% whild approval for Republicans is still in the 20's.
And President Obama's approval is in the 60's
After 8 years of defending and supporting George Walker Bush, the entire Republican establishment has thrown the man under the bus.
Its funny.

I love Bobby Jindall

2009-02-25T08:09:00.000-08:00

I watched the President's address to Congress last night and then watched Governor Jindall's response.

I really hope that this man is the future of the Republican party. To say his speech, especially following the President's speech, was uninspiring is a vast understatement. And that's only style points.

Governor Jindall decided to remind the country of the Federal Governments horribly failed response to Hurricane Katrina.

He distorted the requirements attached to the Unemployment Insurance monies in the Stimulus Bill.

He chose to remind us of the incredible growth in spending under a Republican President and (for 6 of 8 years) a Republican congress and then claimed that Republicans have the solution to solving the financial crisis they largely created.

Being a Republican, he stated that the economic policies he and the Republican party support consist of cutting taxes. Completely deaf to the realization that President Bush's tax cuts didn't give us vibrant growth and literally doubled the national debt in 8 years. 8 years of tepid growth in GDP and 8 years where job growth didn't even keep up with population growth.

8 years of record deficits

And his solution - Cut Taxes

I love this guy!!!

He complains that the US Government is going to spend $300Million buying new more efficient vehicles which provides jobs to auto workers, reduces our dependence on foreign oil, and helps to reduce green house gas emissions.

I love this guy!!!

He complains about the Democrats spending money we do not have on things we do not need. Coming from a Republican after what they did the past 8 years, that is the very picture of irony. and he doesn't even see it!

He seems to thing that the Republican package of pure tax cuts wouldn't amount to spending money we don't have. He seems to think that cutting taxes won't ballon the debt. Clueless is the word I am looking for.

I love this guy!!!!

Then there was his disconnect on energy policy. Some of the programs Republicans have been complaining about (like buying fuel efficient vehicles and building high speed rail lines) are directly aimed reducing our dependence on foreign oil and cleaning up our environment. Then he goes on to say that we must increase use of alternative energy supplies and become more efficient. He does add increased domestic drilling and an expansion of nuclear power to the list of things that our President is already pushing for.

That's clearly going to be a winning strategy for the Republican Party.

On to Health Care.

He states that the goal of the Republican party is to ensure that no one has to worry about losing their health care. Then adds that Republicans don't want government bureaucrats interfering in the decisions made by doctors and their patients. He seems quite content to allow insurance companies interfere all they want. Problem is that President Obama hasn't advocated a government take over of health care. He advocates universal health care through access to private insurance or allowing Americans to join the same health plan used by members of Congress. Republicans love straw men and this is one of them. Obama has not proposed a government take over of health care, so Republicans find themselves warning against something the President isn't proposing.

If this really is the best the Republicans have, they are in more trouble than I thought!!

I love this guy!!!!

Keeping President Obama Honest

2009-02-18T08:03:00.000-08:00

I encourage everyone to check out http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/

It's a site that is tracking President Obama's performance against 510 promises that they have identified that he made since beginning his campaign for the Presidency.

The current count is:

Promises Kept: 9
Promises Broken: 2
Compromises: 3
Stalled:0
In the works:21
Not Started: 475

Whatever you think of our President, he asked to be held accountable to his promises and that is what this site does.

It also confirms or debunks many of the statements being made by people on both sides of the aisle.

If you hear some claims, good or bad, about the President and his efforts, this is a great place to check (along with Snopes.com and FactCheck.org) to find if the claims are true or not.

Enjoy

Legalize Marijuana

2009-02-11T14:36:00.000-08:00

I was struck by the idiocy of the furor around the picture of Michael Phelps taking a hit from a bong.

This kid is clearly one of the most incredible athletes in the world right now and he was forced to do the mea culpa circuit for smoking pot.

Utterly insane.

The original laws against Marijuana were racist in nature, specifically targeting Hispanics. The arguments used against pot were complete fabrications about how Hispanics and Blacks who smoked became crazed beasts who might even look at a White Woman.

I remember a great propaganda film called Reefer Madness that I saw when I was in college. It portrayed pot users as wild beasts, capable of murder and rape. I went to college in the 70's. Most everyone I knew smoked from time to time. None of them were murders or rapists.

And now, any attempt to legalize pot run into a hailstorm of illogic and outright lies.

The biggest lie is the "gateway drug" lie. The only reason pot is a gateway to more serious drug use is that its illegal. Once you have crossed the line into illegal drug use, there are fewer barriers to cross before you graduate to seriously harmful drugs.

Marijuana is not physically addictive (unlike both alcohol and tobacco).
Marijuana is much less physically harmful than alcohol.
Marijuana is not a gateway to other crimes of violence like alcohol is.

Alcohol leads directly to the deaths of around 200,000 Americans a year. Tobacco leads to the death of perhaps 400,000 every year.

Show me a study that links any deaths to Marijuana.

I have no doubt that people high on pot have done stupid things like drive and ended up dead or killing other people. Nothing close to the number killed in the same way by Alcohol. But I am sure it happens.

Marijuana use probably leads to lung cancer. Pulling smoke into your lungs and holding it there is not actually going to be good for you. But since most smokers that I know smoke maybe a joint a day, I doubt it has the same impact as a pack of cigarettes.

Its another testament to Republicans and their fondness for belief based laws that marijuana is still illegal.

My poison of choice is alcohol. Despite all the drugs I could have tried in college, I never did for no reason other than I just didn't care to. But I should have the choice. The same way I can choose to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol.

I screwed up

2009-02-04T05:56:00.000-08:00

Can you believe it, a President who admits to mistakes, doesn't try to blame anybody else and commits to doing better next time!!

President Obama last night on NBC News

"I'm here on television saying I screwed up, and that's part of the era of responsibility. It's not never making mistakes; it's owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them and that's what we intend to do."

Now that is a Change.

Wrong Again

2009-02-02T04:57:00.000-08:00

I am wondering if Republicans ever tire of being wrong, seriously mind-numbingly wrong??

In 1993, President Bill Clinton inherited record Budget Deficits and a faltering economy. He pushed through an Economic Plan that included raising taxes. It got not a single vote in the House. Republicans predicted economic doom and disaster. What we got was the 8 years of strong economic growth, 21 million new jobs, and a Budget Surplus.

In 2001, President Bush inherits a Budget Surplus and a faltering economy. He pushed through massive tax cuts, only by limiting them to 10 years because of their huge cost, promising strong economic growth. Instead what we got was 8 years of anemic job growth, growing income disparities, a sputtering Stock Market and obscene deficits. By the time President Bush and the Republicans were through, we had an economic collapse to rival the Great Depression, Trillion Dollar Deficits, more than doubling of the National Debt, a banking system that won't lend, a diminished prestige in the world and two wars, one of which should never have been fought, the other should never have been ignored. Oh, and a ruined city.

Now its 2009, President Obama has inherited more challenges than perhaps any President in history with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. And now, a badly needed stimulus package has passed the House without a single Republican vote. Sound familiar.

Do they ever get tired of being wrong

About the Economy
About regulation
About Global Warming
About Invading Iraq
About the importance of Competence
About Torture

I almost looks like they like being wrong.

The Marginalization of the Republican Party

2009-01-31T07:11:00.000-08:00

The house passed its version of President Obama's stimulus bill this week. Without a single Republican vote.

Republicans complained that it was too much spending and not enough tax cuts.

They even proposed an alternative program. It was composed completely of tax cuts.

There are a number of studies out there that show that direct spending on things like unemployment insurance extensions and infrastructure projects are far more effective at spurring economic growth and creating jobs than tax cuts.

There are also studies that show that tax cuts not accompanied by spending cuts do little to spur short term economic growth, never pay for themselves, and because of the impact of the long term debt they create, do not spur long term economic growth.

Yet the Republican Caucus, despite its constant complaints about Bi-Partisanship, proposed a bill composed entirely of tax cuts.

They have no ideas and little influence. All they have left is to be obstructionist, to try and get in the way of progress.

It is gratifying to me to see them implode like this. They are rapidly becoming a small regional party. Their famous Southern Strategy has come full circle.

Investigate, Prosecute, Convict

2009-01-27T16:07:00.000-08:00

One of the issues that our new President has to face is the call to investigate and possibly prosecute members of the Administration of George W Bush for a myriad of crimes, most importantly torture.

President Obama has made it clear he would prefer not to go there. He understands, as most do, that prosecuting members of the previous administration would be a major distraction from what he is trying to accomplish, would damage his efforts to move forward on issues in a Bipartisan fashion, and might, in the end, only yield minor convictions of peripheral characters.

He should do it anyway.

I have no interest in seeing Congress doing the investigating. It would be immediately politicized, Congress would give immunity to people we should be investigating or even prosecuting, and they have more important things to do.

Attorney General Eric Holder should appoint a Special Prosecutor. Perhaps Patrick Fitzgerald after he is done with Blogovich. Or a career prosecutor that was hired by the Bush Justice Department, or another holdover US Attorney.

There is little doubt that employees of the United States Government tortured people held in their custody. The Convening Authority for the Military Tribunals has already dismissed all charges against one of the prisoners held at GITMO specifically that person had been tortured by military interrogators. President Bush admitted to and defended water boarding of prisoners. At the end of WWII we prosecuted Japanese Officers for Water boarding our prisoners. How can we argue that we are above the law, that its OK for us to torture?

The Bush Administration argued exactly that. They were wrong. Torture is immoral and illegal.

It is also clear that the Bush Administration monitored the phone calls, some of them purely domestic phone calls, without a warrant. A clear and unequivocal violation of the Constitution ever Military Officer and every President swears to protect.

One of the ways that we can and should recover our standing in the world is by showing that we don't' hold ourselves to be above our own laws, let alone international laws.

As an aside, were the tables reversed, I have no doubt that a Republican Administration, and/or a Republican controlled congress would pursue those investigations with vigor.

We must pursue the investigations, in as non-partisan and transparent was as possible to remind ourselves and prove to the rest of the world that we are a Nation of Laws.

Despite the cost, despite the distraction, its something we must do.

Nicotine, Evolution, Global Warming and the Politics of Faith

2009-01-17T15:54:00.000-08:00

As I watched the swearing in of our new President and listened to his inauguration speech, I was struck by one line in particular.

"We will restore science to its rightful place"

One of the hallmarks of the administration of George W Bush and many Republicans is a willingness to deny science in deference to beliefs, often irrational beliefs.

For years through the 60's and 70's and in some cases into the 80's many conservatives denied the clear science that demonstrated that cigarettes were both addictive and deadly. Their beliefs were supported by scientists paid for by the cigarette companies. Somehow they succeeded in making science, not a matter for debate over the facts, but a political issue, a debate between liberal and conservative.

Those who would deny the addictiveness and lethality of cigarettes were wrong. Science was right.

The theory of evolution, the concept that natural selection, is the dominate mechanism for species to change and for the creation of new species, is only a theory. But its a theory that best explains the available data. That's what science is, evaluating the data and creating or refining a theory that best explains the data. That is what we should be teaching, science. There are those, mostly conservative Christians, who don't believe in evolution. They reject evolution as a valid theory, not because they have a theory that better explains the data, but because its not a perfect explanation and because they believe that the Biblical story of creation and the theory of evolution are incompatible. They reject science not because their theory better explains the facts, but because they chose to reject the facts.

And now, incredibly, there are those who deny that the average surface temperature of this planet is increasing, they deny that its increasing at a dangerously fast pace, they deny that human activity is driving the pace of increase in temperatures globally.

They look at a study that looked at over 900 studies of changes in global climate and found not a single study that contradicts the theory that human activity is causing/accelerating this increase in temperature. And they reject it.

I have been told that mankind could not possibly be the source of the increase in temperature. Expressed emphatically. A belief. No science to support the belief.

I have been told that using tree ring studies and ice core studies don't yield good data because these studies are imperfect. No acknowledgement that tree ring studies are not used by them selves. Ice Core Studies are not used by themselves. These tools are used in concert with written histories. They are used in concert with the geologic record. But since these studies are imperfect, the deniers reject them, not because they have better theories, but because they have their beliefs.

I have been asked how we know what the temperature was 1000 years ago because the thermometer hadn't been invented yet. They deny sciences estimates of temperatures not because they have better theories, but because they have their beliefs.

I have been told that we don't know what the temperature was 100 years ago because thermometers were not as accurate as they are now. As if old thermometers were not just less accurate but just plain wrong. Either reading high or low all across the world. Not science, just belief.

So they deny that human activity is causing global warming. They don't put forward a competing theory to explain the data. The closest they get is solar cycles, which could well be a factor in the current warming, but isn't significant enough to be causing it, which doesn't explain the clear relationship between atmospheric concentrations of Methane and CO2 and increases in temperature, and which doesn't explain the long term trend in temperatures since the 1850's.

It comes down to belief.

They don't like the theories, they don't have better theories to explain the facts, so they just deny the theory or even deny the facts. Based on belief.

And now our President promises to ". . .restore science to its rightful place." It can't happen too soon.

Those who denied the addictiveness and lethality of cigarettes were free to keep smoking and they get to die sooner as a result.

Those who reject the theory of evolution can believe what they want as long as they don't try to teach their beliefs as science.

But those who deny that human activity is driving global warming are harming more than just themselves. Their denial of science and their opposition to the measures necessary to address the problem have made addressing the causes of Global Warming even harder and more urgent.

Based on their beliefs.

I look forward to a return to science as a basis for policy.

Waterboarding is Torture

2009-01-15T19:17:00.000-08:00

Perhaps nothing that we have heard in any of the confirmation hearings so far expresses the differences between the tragedy of the last 8 years and the coming administration that has promised CHANGE.

Eric Holder, Attorney General designee, was asked very simply, Is Waterboarding Torture.

His answer was equally simple.

Yes, waterboarding is torture.

Michael Mukasey, Alberto Gonzales' successor and our current Attorney General, pretended not to know what waterboarding was, so he never answered the question. Alberto Gonzales, while proclaiming that the US did not torture, was never willing to state clearly that we would not waterboard. The President himself has admitted that the United States did use waterboard in interrogations of our prisoners.

The difference is clear and stark and heartening.

We, through our government, are finally admitting that we, through our government, tortured our prisoners.

And Barack Obama has promised that we will not torture, we will not waterboard.

It can't happen soon enough

Reagan, The Lies Conservatives Tell Us and a Generation of Greed

2008-12-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

In his Presidental campaign against President Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan was very critical of President Carter because the United States Government was running deficits of $60 Billion a year. He promised to cut taxes by $60 Billion/year and to raise defense spending by another $60 Billion/year.

Think about that. He knew he was going to inherit a $60B deficit. And then he was going to cut taxes by about $60B. And on top of that, he was going to increase spending by $60B dollars.

That adds up to a deficit of about $180Billion.

He also promised to balance the budget.

I guess 2 out of 3 isn't bad.

Reagan got elected by telling America a lie. George HW Bush refered to it as Voodo Economics. He was telling the truth then.

America chose to believe the lie. And Republicans have been repeating the lie ever since.

George HW Bush saw the light and told the same lie and got himself elected.

And the idiot in Chief who currently occupies the White House got himself elected by telling the lie over and over and over again.

Here's the truth.

Tax Cuts, that are NOT by matching Spending Cuts, stimulate the economy in the short term. they don't seem to stimulate the economy anywhere close to as much as Republican's claim, but they do stimulate the economy. Its a what liberal economists have been proposing since the New Deal. Create Budget Deficits and those deficits will spur economic growth.

As the economy grows, partially as a response to the added impact of the budget deficits, tax revenues eventually return to where they were before the tax cuts. Unfortunately government spending has continued to grow with the economy and we are left with continuing deficits that are a direct result of the tax cuts.

The accumulated Budget Deficits, called the National Debt, place a lot of pressure on credit markets, driving up interest rates and slowing economic growth.

In recent years, much of the new National Debt (which has literally doubled under the idiot in chief) has been sold to foriegn banks and governments, particularly China and Japan. Selling that much debt to competitors/advesaries creates a significant strategic risk.

In the long term, the tax cuts and their resulting deficits, have little or no stimulative effect because of the resulting increased interest rates. Some studies indicate that tax cuts and their resulting deficits actually retard economic growth in the long term.

Despite all this. Despite all the studies that show that they are not telling the truth, Republican's keep telling the same lie

And as a nation we believed them.

Despite the absolutely nonsensical aspect of the lie, we believed it. Despite the balloning deficits, we believed it.

Because we wanted to.

I blame my generation. We heard the lie. We saw all the evidence that it was a lie. We watched the deficits grow to almost 100% of the Gross Domestic Product. But we were getting the benefits of the deficits and knew that we woulnd't have to pay the debt. Unconsionably, Immorally we have chosen to believe something that we have to know is a lie so that we dont' have to take responsibility for our own debts.

Principally for this reason, I view the Reagan Presidency as a disaster. He taught his party the lie and our kids and their kids will be paying and paying and paying.

And my generation chose to believe the lie.

What is Marriage?

2008-11-27T19:12:00.000-08:00

On an earlier post, I asked what justified denying committed homosexual couples the legal benefits and privileges of the civil marriage contract.

Basically the answer I got was because Homosexual relationships are fundamentally different and that the traditional concept of marriage was exclusively heterosexual.

At the time, I tried to focus the discussion on the simply legal issue. Those opposed to Gay Marriage kept coming back to their view of the traditional definition of marriage.

So what is marriage?

There is no argument that no society has defined marriage to include an exclusively single sex couple.

But that being said, the "Traditional" definition of marriage that the opponents of gay marriage is not that old.

Plural marriages, where a single husband had multiple wives, were common in the old testament, and polygamy was practiced in this country, mostly by Mormons, as recently as the 19 century. Polygamy is still practiced in many countries, particularly in some Muslim nations.

But even marriages between two and only two people have changed dramatically over time. We are not that far away, in our society, from arranged marriages, where the daughter was given in marriage by her father without ever having met her husband. We are not that far in time from legal structures where women were barely more than chattel in a marriage.

The "Traditional" definition of marriage that Gay Marriage opponents refer to was a reflection of the times. The status of women has changed dramatically changed over time. The availability of divorce has changed over time. The availability of marriages as civil contracts that were not consecrated before a cleric in an religious setting is relatively new as well.

Marriage is not an institution that has a fixed and immutable history or definition.

And Society has changed. Millions of committed gay couples live together with all the emotional commitments of hetero couples. They share lives, raise kids, and grow old together. Society accepts gays as fully capable and responsible members of society in ways that it never has before.

So why should the definition of marriage not change to reflect that change in society in the same way that the definition has changed over time as the status of women has changes?

War

2008-11-19T14:17:00.000-08:00

They tell us we are at war.

A war on terror.

What exactly does that mean?? So far that supposed war has been used to justify an invasion of a nation that was not an imminent threat, either direct or indirect to this country. And we knew enough before the invasion to know that.

Its been used to justify the internment of prisoners that we refuse to recognize as prisoners of war, and claim the right to try them in military tribunals after subjecting them to treatment that would easily meet the definition of torture.

Its been used to justify the kidnapping of foreign nationals from other countries and sending them to secret prisons where they were subjected to torture, where we would not even acknowledge that we held them or where, where we could do anything we wanted to them completely outside of any legal framework.

Its been used to justify a Patriot Act that the FBI itself has admitted abusing and authorizing the NSA to listen in on phone calls to and from American Citizens without benefit of a warrant, a program that recent reports has been abused by the NSA for the private perverse pleasure of NSA analysts.

It was used to justify the arrest and detention without trial of American Citizens, though the Supreme Court finally did put a stop to that.

It was used as a pretext for manipulating the color coded alert warning system in the months before the 2004 elections to keep the American people afraid and help the President's election.

So what/who are we fighting? And why??

It started with the September 11 attacks by Al Qeada that killed 3000 people, mostly Americans, in 3 states.

Once we were certain it was Al Qeada, we demanded that Afghanistan surrender Al Qeada's leaders to us for trial. They refused. We took out the Afghani government for their complicity in the 9/11 attacks and destroyed the Al Qeada infrastructure in Afghanistan. We didn't get Bin Laden or the other leaders of Al Qeada, but we had them on the run.

So far so good.

Then it all went soo badly wrong.

We took a problem that was largely religious and societal at its root and tried to pretend there was a military solution.

There were people in our government who knew better, but that's not who Cheney and Rumsfeld listened to.

Al Qeada doesn't hate us because of our freedoms. In 8 years of saying some incredibly stupid things, that might be the stupidest. It was probably the most costly. That kind of idiotic thinking was used to justify all the things we did later.

Why does Al Qeada hate us? Mostly because we are over there. They may not approve of our morals or the way our women dress, but that's not why they are blowing themselves up. They look at our history in the Arab/Muslim world of supporting dictatorships of different stripes (from the secularist Shah of Iran to the Wahhabist royal family of Saudi Arabia. They could see that we didn't really give a shit about Arabs or Muslims, we just wanted a secure and reliable flow of oil.

When did Osama Bin Laden develop his hatred of the United States? When we supported the Shah?? No. When were helping the Afghani Mujaheddin repel the Soviet?? No. That happened in 1991 when we deposited an army of 500,000 infidels, including women, in Saudi Arabia, the heart of Islam. He didn't hate us because American women could wear bikinis on beaches in Florida, he hated us because American could drive around Saudi Arabia uncovered and without a male relative as escort.

He could probably have gotten over it if we had won the first Gulf War and then left. But we didn't. We kicked Saddam out of Kuwait and then stayed. The presence of a white Christian army occupying bases in the living breathing heart of Islam was seen as an affront.

He hated us, not because of what we could do in our own country, but because of what we were doing in his. And the other Arab and Muslim countries in the region.

John McCain repeatedly referred to the war on Terror as The Transcendent Issue of our Times.

It may be

But it doesn't have a military solution.

We cannot defeat terrorism with bombs and bullets. We can certainly kill lots of terrorists. In doing so we will also kill lots more civilians because the terrorists hide, often in plain sight, amongst civilians, some of whom don't even know who these people are.

But by occupying an Arab/Muslim nation (Iraq), and by killing Arabs and Muslims in at least 3 other nations (Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) we are only making Osama Bin Laden's job easier. He has a virtually endless supply of recruits and a largely limitless supply of money. He is most likely living in Pakistan, training his next generation of killers the the relative safety of the mountains of western Pakistan.

Are we going to defeat terrorism by threatening virtually every country in the neighborhood, by bombing terrorists and killing all the women and children around them, by occupying a Muslim/Arab nation and talking like we want to stay there for a century?

Probably not.

So what do we do?

As much as possible, we deny them justification for their actions. That means we get out of Iraq, sooner rather than later, that means we stay in the Middle East with as light a foot print as possible, That means that we transition our effort in Afghanistan from primarily military to primarily social, financial, and political. We can compete in the marketplace of ideas. Not by trying to convert them all to Christianity, but by helping them find the moderation and tolerance that is as easy to find in the Koran as the hatred and violence. By creating a market for their farmers to grow something other than poppies used to make Heroin. By building schools that teach useful subjects to compete with the Saudi funded Wahhabi Madrases teaching xenophobia and hatred. By working with the central government to reach out to the warlords who control much of Afghanistan and showing them the benefits of integration with the larger nation, benefits for the warlords themselves and for their people.

And we stop pretending that Radical Islam is a transcendent threat to the United States. They lack the power to destroy us, they lack the power to overthrow our government. We need to keep the threat in perspective and acknowledge that surrendering our freedoms and denying the rule of law to others in this fight we cannot win with guns in the end damages us far more than Al Qeada ever could.

We need to recover our place in the world. The shining nation on the hill. Truly a beacon of hope for people all over the world. A nation that doesn't torture and doesn't tolerate torture by others. A nation that doesn't hold prisoners in a limbo status for ever just because we say we can, but respects international law. Where international law is inadequate to the modern world, we don't ignore it, we work to update it.

There is no denying that the Osama Bin Ladens of the world would love to attack America directly again. And we have to take strong positive actions to ensure that doesn't happen again. But that effort is more law enforcement and intelligence than military. More collating and understanding the data we already have than torturing suspected terrorists for to get them to say anything whether its real or not.

There is a danger from Radical Islamists and we need to address the danger.

But its not a war

And the solution has very little to do with military power..

Something else I don't understand

2008-11-19T13:12:00.000-08:00

Alaska,

They elected Sarah Palin as governor!! Now its true that she was running against the worst and most corrupt governor in Alaska's history, but still.

And they came very close to reelecting Ted Stevens to the Senate, after he was convicted of official corruption (accepting gifts from a contractor and failing to report those gifts as required by law).

What were they thinking???

You can't save the world, but you can save a small part

2008-11-19T06:27:00.000-08:00

KIVA.ORG

If you want to save just a little part of the world, this site might be what you are seeking.

KIVA is basically a microcredit bank soliciting for investors (us) on line.

You get to choose who you lend to and how much you lend.

Dorri (keeper of my heart) has already made a loan that has been repaid and is in the process of making another.

Its one way, a very simple and direct way, to save a small part of the planet.

Want to help?

KIVA.ORG

What happens next

2008-11-10T16:54:00.000-08:00

69 days till the end of an error.

Our President Elect is undoubtedly getting advice from any and every corner.

Here's mine.

The day he is sworn in he can issue executive orders and accomplish much. And I think he should.

He needs to address the global economic crisis.

But what he needs to take on, boldly and immediately is Climate Change.

Nothing that the President Elect does will be as important, long term, for this country and for the entire planet, as addressing Climate Change.

In 2000, President Bush ran, among other things, on a pledge to institute carbon caps as President to address the dangers of Global Warming. One of his many lies to the American People.

John McCain supported a Cap and Trade ssytem of controlling and then reducing CO2 emissions in this campaign.

We have waited too long, wasted too much time, and the consequences of inaction are too great. We can not, should not, wait until we have fixed the economy. There is no credible dispute about humankinds contribution to the pace and eventual size of the increase in global surface temperatures. The only dispute is about how hot it going to get and how fast its going to get there.

Its clear that the predictions of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change were, if anything, conservative. All the indicators seem to point to things moving faster than those predictions.

I just finished reading what may be the most important book I have read in a very long time, perhaps the most important book I have ever read. "Hot, Flat and Crowded" by Tom Friedman presents a clear and compelling prescription for radical action and for the huge economic opportunites that exist in creating the new industries that will emerge in alternative energies, conservation, more energy efficient transportation.

It requires bold and decisive leadership, the kind that a newly elected President with strong majorities in both houses can show.

I encourage anyone and everyone to read this book.

Starting with our new President.

So much I don't understand

2008-11-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

In all the euphoria over the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States, some other stories were briefly overshadowed.

Several states passed one version or another of attempts to deny certain rights to people based on their sexual orientation.

I understand that many people believe that Homosexuality is a sin.

What I don't understand is why that religious based belief should be the law of the land. What is the justification for discrimination against people because of who they love??

I just don't understand.

And now the really hard work begin

2008-11-04T21:26:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching the most amazing political event of my life. An event that I have wished for, hoped for, almost prayed for all of the last year.

We have elected one of the most incredible and inspirational men of our time to the Presidency at a time of true need. More than any election in my memory, easily more than any election since 1932, and maybe more than any election since the civil war, our country is facing a range of challenges that will test not only our President but all of us.

We are fighting two wars, one is winding down, the other is not going well.
Our economy is in crisis. The banking system is bent if not broken. Our manufacturing base is severely eroded by our fading competitiveness. Our government is sooo deeply in debt as to be constrained in ways we will almost certainly regret. We as a people are also deeply in debt, to our detriment individually and as a nation. Our prestige around the world has not been this low since before WWII. We have sacrificed must of our moral authority, and with it much of our ability to lead the rest of the world. Our profligate waste of energy leads us to give Hundreds of Billions of Dollar every year to nations that don't like us, to nations that supress their own people, to nations that will do us ill if they can. Our profligate consumption of fossil fuels is helping to change the worlds climate in ways we cannot always predict but we are almost all to our detriment.

So it is fitting and proper that we have elected a man that ran a campaign of hope and optimism and inclusion. A man who made a point of always honoring his opponents. A man who never allowed his campaign to dip into personal attacks. Whose negative ads were criticisms of his opponents positions, not of his honor nor patriotism nor integrity. A man whose very candidacy exemplifies the truth of the greatness of America.

I have been voting for President since 1972. Never have I been as in thrall, almost in awe of my chosen candidate.

Now the test begins.

I trust and rely in President Elect Barack Obama to pull us together to meet the challenges ahead.

Its a great day to be an American.

The politics of Fear

2008-10-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

4 years ago a woman I dearly love said she was "Afraid" of the possibility that John Kerry might get elected President.

Afraid?

She is a conservate Christian. There was never any chance she was going to vote for John Kerry for President. His approach to government and hers are vastly different. I don't know if she voted for President Bush because she believed that he was doing a great job or if she was voting against Senator Kerry because she disagreed with the large majority of his policies. Or some of both. But I am certain she voted for President Bush.

Thats why we hold elections.

But why should she fear a Kerry Presidency?

I disagree with President Bush on almost every major issue. I think he has been a complete and utter disaster as a President. No suprise, I didn't vote for him.

But I don't fear him or his Presidency.

I won't vote for John McCain. The Senator McCain who ran for office in 2000 was inspiring and attractive. McCain 2008 is a cranky old man who has changed his mind on virtually every major issue.

But I am not afraid of a McCain Presidency.

I am a partisan, no doubt. But it appears to me that Republicans seem far more interested in selling fear in their campaigns. The overwhelming thrust of Senator McCain's campaign for the last month has been to attack Senator Obama.

He lacks experience

He lacks judgement

He's a Socialist

He's a Liberal

He's a Communist.

Senator McCain keeps telling us that if we elect Senator Obama bad things will happen. We will not be safe. He will take away your money and ruin the economy.

Fear Him.

He hasn't gone as far as President Bush did in 2004 when his campaign claimed that electing John Kerry would some how make us more vulnerable to terrorist attack. But he still wants us fear Senator Obama at one level or another. But he did question Senator Obama's patriotism when he stated that Senator Obama would rather lose a war than lose a political campaign. Governor Palin has repeatedly talked about good patriotic parts of a state or the country with an obvious implication that people or areas of the country that don't support John McCain or some how anti-American or not patriotic.

I contend that I am a patriot. I know that I love America. I do not support McCain/Biden.

It appears to me that often Republican's understand they are on the other side of most issues from the voters so campaign isn't a positive one about why we should vote for a Republican, but a negative one about why we should vote against the Democrat.

Senator Obama was on the TV last night for 30 minutes. Never once did he attack John McCain. Barely mentioned him. Can you picture what a 30 McCain infomercial would look like? Based on the way his campaign is running now he would spend a large fraction of his time telling us reasons to vote against Senator Obama.

I understand the politics of fear, of personal destruction. Its a style of politics that Republican's seem far more comfortable with. And unfortunately it works. Thats a shame.

A woman's right to Chose and Abortions

2008-10-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

As a liberal, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I support a woman's right to chose. I reject the argument that life begins at conception. I believe that life begins at birth. Bill Clinton expressed it as clearly as anyone. Abortion should be Safe, Rare, and Legal.

This one one of the few positions that I hold where I am an absolutist. The decision to carry the child to term or have an abortion is the mother's and hers alone.

I understand and respect the Alan Keyes of the world who have an equally uncompromising position on the other side. If, as many believe, life begins at conception, the abortion is the deliberate taking of a human life. That is the definition of murder. Alan Keyes was clear and unequivocal on this in his 2000 quest for the Republican Presidential nomination.

I have no respect for those who try to finesse this issue. This occurs more in Republican ranks than in Democratic ranks, but both sides are trying to keep their head down on this.

The current debate about Partial Birth abortion is an example of the insanity of this debate. Abortion opponents want to ban a specific procedure without regard to any concept of medical necessity, without regard for any threat to the life of the mother and without any regard for any threat to the health of the mother. All of this over a procedure that is used in less than .2% of abortions (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/psrh/full/3500603.pdf) and is usually performed on a non-viable fetus. The majority of states already ban abortions after presumed viability (usually defined as 24 weeks) in most cases, the use of the Partial Birth Abortion procedure is already prohibited in cases where the fetus might be viable.

I am not going to argue whether or not women chose to have abortions for capricious reasons or for intensely difficult reasons. That isn't the point. We as a society don't get to tell a woman that her reasons are good enough or they are not. That's above our pay grade.

I don't see enough people trying to get Abortion opponents to explain how they can believe that life begins at conception, and not believe that the mother who solicits for the murder of her unborn child is not as guilty as the doctor. Even more so. But they don't want to be seen as extremists. So they take a position that is logically indefensible and pretend it makes sense.

I also find it fascinating the the same people who find abortion to be abhorrent are also opposed to many of the ways that might make unplanned pregnancies less common and reduce any perceived need for abortion.

Though there are few absolutists on this issue, I have no respect for any position in the middle ground.

Why I support Senator Obama

2008-10-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

As much as I want this campaign to be about the issues, I have spent most of my time complaining about how Senator McCain is running his campaign. For me though, I am not voting against Senator McCain, what ever I think about how he is running his campaign. I am voting for Senator Obama. And here's why!

Senator Obama and I basically share the same belief that government can be a force for good in the world.

I believe that unfettered free markets are inherently unstable and they will almost always lead to an excessive concentration of wealth. Senator Obama and I believe that markets need an appropriate level of regulation to prevent the kinds of excesses that lead to the worst of the bust and boom cycle.

Senator Obama agree that the Iraq war was a Strategic Mistake. I believe that it is the most disastorous foriegn policy mistake in our history. I support his plan for a responsible withdrawl of our forces from Iraq and the addition of some forces to Afghanistan.

I agree with Senator Obama that we must talk to our enemies as well as our friends. However inartfully he expressed it in the debate with Hillary Clinton, attempts to isolate those we disagreement have almost always failed. Under President Bush the policy of not talking to our enemies has been part and parcel of the most incompetent and damaging foriegn policy in our history.

We share a belief in the value and even necessity of improving the quality of public education.

We both believe that much of the speed of global warming is caused by human activity, mostly the production of CO2 in industrial and power applications.

We both believe that the government must be fiscally responsible. That long term huge deficits are unsustainable. He might not phrase it this way, but I believe it is immoral for us to pass on to our children and their children the bill for what we are spending today.

We both believe that it is almost insane that there are 50 million uninsured people in the richest country in the world. Universal Health Care should be a right.

I also see in Senator Obama a man who can inspire and lead. A man who has tried to keep this campaign civil, even friendly, and a discussion of the issues, not a set of personal attacks.

I am excited about the prospect of an Obama Presidency. Combine that with strong majorities in both houses and we can accomplish great things.

I also believe that Senator Obama will appoint judges to the bench that will protect my civil liberties from the excesses any government will go to if not properly constrained by a strong judiciary.

Senator Obama largely agree on the right of a woman to control her body. I am probably more of an absolutist than he is. I would oppose laws that restrict that right in any way. It is to me a given that children lack the emotional or intellectual ability to make their own decisions. I do believe that parents should be involved when a pregnant minor is facing the incredible decision whether or not to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term. There needs to be some mechanism, some sort of judicial override, to mediate or even decide the issue if the pregnant minor and her parents cannot agree. Its not a simple issue and the solutions to issues like this tend to be complex and full of nuance.

As a nation, we face huge challenges. The current financial crisis is only the most recent. I see in his ability to inspire and lead the hope that he can truly bring sides together on the issues we must confront.

For these reasons, I support Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States.

Guilt by Association

2008-10-10T09:24:00.001-07:00

I have watched with some dismay the current effort to dimish Senator Obama because of the words or actions of people he knows and even some that he doesn't.

The Senator is being criticized because the magazine published by the church he used to attend gave an award to Minister Louis Farrakhan. Senator Obama has condemned Minister Farrakhan's anti-Semetic words and actions and as near as I can tell the two have never met. Yet somehow Senator McCain's campaign wants to try to link Senator Obama to Farrakhan.

Then there is Senator Obama's relationship with Rashid Khalidi. They have a relationship going back 12 years. Professor Khalidi is a supporter of Palestine and a harsh critic of Isreal. Senator Obama has made it clear that he does not agree with Rashid Khalidi on the issues in the Isreali-Palestinian conflict. But again, McCain and his supporters want to try to paint them together.

And then there is the Reverend Wright. Senator Obama's pastor for 20 years. The Reverend has said things in some of his sermons that most people find offensive. At the same time his church has been a real force for good in its neighborhood. But in a campaign that seems to make no allowance for nuance, some choose to believe that if Senator Obama attends that church, that he therefore endorses everything that his pastor has said. The Reverend Wright said some things that were strongly critical of the United States. So in a view that has no nuance, that means somehow that Obama agrees with those views.

Really???

I am a liberal. I have expressed my beliefs in my sister's house and she didn't throw me out. That doesn't make her a liberal. She is still my sister and I love her. That doesn't make me a religious conservative. I have family that have been known to use the N word. I don't approve of it, sometimes I tell them so. But that doesn't make me a racist. I have friends who believe that the Bush Administration was behind the 9/11 attacks. I disagree with them. But my relationship with them doesn't make me a nut.

If you can look into Senator Obama's past and find racist actions, or find where he said or acted like he hates America, or where he did anything other support Isreal, then talk about that.

If you want to know who his advisors will be, look at who they are. They are not Rashid Khalidi, or Reverend Farrakhan or even the Reverend Wright or Bill Ayers. He is getting economic advice from former Secretaries of the Treasury and private citizens like Warren Buffet. He is getting foriegn policy advice form former Secretaries of State.

Senator McCain actively pursued the support of nut job pastors like Haggi who have said their own idiotic, racist, sexist, hateful things. But I don't think that Senator McCain is a Racist or a Sexist or an Idiot. If one of those people was an advisor to teh McCain campaign, then I would care. But they are not. And the people that McCain's supporters are trying to link Senator Obama to are not his advisors either.

I disagree with Senator McCain on most major issues, not because of who he has as friends or acquaintances, but because of what he would do as President.

A draw is a win

2008-10-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

I liked the Debate last night. They stuck almost exclusively to the issues. There was a little attacking, but not much and neither candidate made it the reason for their campaign. John McCain answered some questions that Obama ducked, Obama answered some questions that McCain ducked.

McCain used the debate to announce a major new policy that I think was undercovered in the post debate blather that I caught. His proposal for the Federal Government to buy distressed mortgages and write down the mortgage principal to match the current value of the house is HUGE and could end up costing us all massive amounts of money. It should have received more play than it did.

But in the end, Obama won by simply looking calm and knowledgeable. The first two debates have done much to undercut McCain's attack that Obama is not ready to lead. He is trying to spin their policy disagreements into a ready to lead narrative and the debates destroy that. They have very real and distinct policy differences. But Obama looks more Presidential than McCain in these things.

On points, probably a draw

On Style, a win for Obama

Where this campaign can go

2008-10-07T08:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.crooksandliars.com/media/play/wmv/6542 (Clicking on the title of this post will launch the video)

I got this video off of CrooksAndLiars.com I suspect its also on the MSNBC website.

No one accuses Keith Olberman of balance. He is unabasedly a liberal. When I watch his show I keep his filter in mind.

This video is his latest Special Comment and it addresses the direction the campaign can go.

He is clearly outraged at McCain-Palin for their decision to go negative in this campaign and lays out the tit for tat that could come from all this.

Campaigns use negative ads because they work. One of the biggest reasons John Kerry lost in 2004 is the lies told about him in the Swiftboat campaign. No truth to them, but they worked.

But is that really the way we want to elect a President.

The Obama campaign has already posted a 13 minute video about McCain's involvement in the Keating 5 scandal. If McCain wants to continue to question Senator Obama's patriotism, if it wants to continue to distort his record and call him dishonorable, then Senator Obama will respond and talk about Keating and Hagee, and McCain talking about G*(ks, and calling Cindy McCain a C#$t and the way he treated his first wife.

Senator McCain has a choice. Engage on the issue or throw mud, hoping something will stick.

This is not the campaign Senator McCain promised us and its not the campaign we deserve.