Aside from what's going on in Maine

Anybody going to this?

Everyone Help out in MAINE!

Thanks MEL for letting us know what to do. Go HERE to make a donation, or do more if you live nearby. Mel is generously doing a raffle for all kinds of excellent stuff!

It's important folks. Donate as much as you can. I'm doing so now.

Newsclipping of the Day :: Reckoning for Democrats

Robert Borosage has written one of the most succinct and compelling analyses of what the Democrats are faced with this summer and fall that i've read lately. Posting a link HERE, but the contents are below for ease and posterity. I hope we'll look back at this time with appreciation that some of our Democratic statesmen and women led the rest of the party out of the ditch and back toward the people's business. Now is the time for all of us to write our letters and speak up!

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"President Obama traveled to Wall Street on the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers that triggered the worst financial debacle since the Great Depression. His purpose was to challenge Wall Street's barons, telling them:

"We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess..where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses"

Those days are over, the president said. It's time for comprehensive legislation. Taxpayers won't cover your bets or your bonuses. And we know once more the threat that financial holdings can pose to the nation.

The president invoked country and the common good. "Instead of learning the lessons...of the crisis, [some in the financial industry] are choosing to ignore them. They do so not just at their own peril, but our nation's." Obama called on Wall Street to act on its own, to overhaul pay systems, to level with consumers, to join with him in defining reform, but his tone was almost wistful. As he knows all too well, for much of Wall Street, patriotism is for suckers. And in Washington, private interests are rolling over the common good.

In the wake of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, the president has called for fundamental reforms vital to the country's future. Put aside whether he's been too bold or too timid, whether he has pushed hard enough or too hard; there isn't any question he is calling the nation to its senses.

Our health care system is broken and unsustainable. Comprehensive reform is unavoidable. We can't continue to rely on fossil fuels; sustainable energy is a security imperative, not a choice. We need to shackle Wall Street, to shrink the size and excess profits of finance, and force it away from its addiction to gambling and back to the essential business of investing in the real economy. We have to reduce the crony capitalist subsidies that get squandered on agribusiness and Cold War weapons systems and top-end tax cuts, and use that money to invest in education, in a modern infrastructure, in research and development vital to a vibrant, high-road economy.

This really shouldn't be controversial. Yes, disagreements about how to get this done are to be expected, but the status quo is simply indefensible. Despite all the fantasies of the rabid right, Obama is moderate by temperament, creative at compromise. He is, as one of his White House staff members described him, a "raging minimalist." He really does believe you put everyone around a table, have a "civil conversation," find areas of agreement and move forward. He does believe that everyone—from billionaire hedge-fund operators to insurance company CEOS to conservative legislators—will in a crisis put the country first.

But he and his reform program are getting mugged. He's taken on the most powerful private interests in America—Big Oil, Wall Street, the insurance and drug lobbies—and they are winning. Republicans, despite the shattering of their conservative shibboleths, have chosen, with lockstep unity, obstruction over compromise. And too many Democrats have shown themselves more beholden to the private interests that pay for their campaigns than the public interest the president of their own party invokes.

We are witnessing a harrowing test of our democracy. America is a big, bustling and entrepreneurial country. We pursue our own passions and pursuits, are jealous of our freedoms, and begrudge governmental intrusions. But in a crisis—faced with depression or war, our history tells us many become one. We join together for the common good.

Well, it is hard to imagine a greater crisis than the one this country has faced over the last years. A middle class that has suffered a lost decade. Two wars. The Great Recession. Gilded Age inequality. Catastrophic climate change accelerating faster than most predictions.

Yet, we haven't come together. Wall Street lobbies against reform. Derivative traders will ante up hundreds of millions to block regulation of credit default swaps. Goldman Sachs is back to computerized gambling and billions in bonuses. The insurance companies are spending over a million-and-a-half dollars a day against comprehensive health-care reform.

The president's preemptive compromises only feed their appetites. He offers polluters a good portion of the revenue generated by "cap and trade." They lobby to weaken the cap.

He bails out banks rather than taking them over and reorganizing them. They lobby against his financial reforms. He doesn't try to push for Medicare for All, accepting the role of employment-based private insurance, and he's accused of a government takeover of health care.

The teabaggers were in Washington this past weekend. Despite their racial furies and right-wing fantasies, they shouldn't be dismissed. Many are working people, losing ground in an economy that isn't working for them. They are angry at a government that seems to take their taxes to bail out billionaire bankers, while they are left to swim or sink. They have every good reason to believe Washington caters to the wealthy and the connected, and not to them. And it is all too easy to deflect that anger to "them" —illegal immigrants, poor minorities, foreign aid recipients.

This is the test for Democrats. With the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats have to produce. If they are too cautious or too compromised, they will feed what could be an ugly populist backlash.

Take health care reform. Sen. Max Baucus has produced a draft for the Finance Committee, making concessions as far anyone can see not for Republican votes, but for insurance lobby approval. He's produced that lobby's dream bill, mandating coverage for everyone without subsidies to make it affordable. His bill would drive people to take the high-deductible, low-coverage plans that are the industry's cash cows. It is hard to imagine a greater disservice to the country or to the party. Take young Americans who vote Democratic in large numbers, force them to buy health insurance that they don't want and can't afford, make them pay for policies that don't cover their health-care costs—and reap the whirlwind that you deserve.

These next months are the reckoning. The president and the Congress will step up to the reforms the country needs—or they will fail the nation in a time of peril. For citizens, now is the time to get engaged. The only way legislators in both parties will rise above partisan politics and private interests is if their constituents allow them no choice.

Middle-income Americans lost income over the last decade, for the first time since we began keeping records. Financial speculation drove the economy off the cliff. Catastrophic climate change is already melting the ice caps. We cannot afford another lost decade. If reason cannot prevail, angry people will increasingly look for a strong man to get something done. And that could make the teabaggers look like a tea party."

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Here's one of my letters. I need to work on the ranting a bit:

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We would all be aghast if our system of education happened to be profit-based. Yes, there are many public and private Universities that take in much more capital than they need to meet operating expenses. And yes, private enterprise and the world of business benefit greatly from our system of education. It relies upon it for successes and profits. But the excess direct capital goes into endowments, to improve scholarship, facilities, and programs, and ensure the growth and endurance of the educational institutions. It doesn't go into exorbitant ransoms for a few elite at the top of the system, controlling the levers. We decided long ago that equal access to basic education was a right that belonged to every citizen, and we committed to that.

Why on earth is it acceptable to us that our system of healthcare should be profit based, now identical to the stock market? Who believes it is moral to buy and trade life and death futures? Who believes the masses should have every resource wrung out of them like coal stripped from the earth, while the few suck up all the resources and benefits? Why are huge profits allowable, giving all the resources to those at the very top, controlling the levers of the system, while those in need are allowed to die or are denied care for cost? Or, maybe worse, why are some given care and then forced into bankruptcy?

This is a government of the masses, and we must commit to single-payer healthcare. We are not slaves waiting to have our pockets emptied by a corrupt and bloated healthcare system. I demand that we craft reform legislation that makes access to healthcare equal and equitable for all. No one should ever die because they did not have access to healthcare. No one should ever go bankrupt or lose their house or nest egg because they became ill. The right to healthcare is as basic to our creed of "pursuit of happiness" as the right to education, free speech, or to assemble. You had better support the "public option" like your life depends on. Because all our lives do.

I Want One of These!

This is priceless! Or should i say Fisher-Priceless!

Ah, but enough with the laughs. I am pissed.

Right wingnuts are all in a tizzy about Obama's speech to America's children... about education. Mind you it hasn't even HAPPENED yet, but they are already condemning this--the speech that hasn't happened yet--because, of course, they know he's an evil recruiter of Hitler youth. It's all over Facebook, the stupid-ass polls.

And they are all freaked about 80% of America believing that no one should die because they can't afford healthcare, nor go bankrupt because they can't pay what the Insurance-Industrial-Complex has determined as a ransom for life. We are all sheep for speaking in one voice about this. Thanks, Tricia. I know you didn't mean to personally attack me, but i do take it personally. And for people like you and I not to be able to find common ground, and respect for one another, well, it pains my heart.

To all of you:
It really depresses me that at the ripe old age of 40, my baby sister is starting her life over, because her husband (who was gainfully employed and had health insurance through the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) had a catastrophic illness. She nearly lost him, and then, ultimately, did lose him when she couldn't fight--Shiavo family-style--with his family any longer about what was best for him. And she lost her house. And she lost her credit. And she lost her marriage. And a great deal of it has to do with the corrupt, backward, inequitable and broken system of "healthcare" and health insurance we have in this country. She is fine now, and she is stronger for it, but it still absolutely kills me the pain, suffering, and just utter bullshit she has been through in the past couple of years over the whole thing.

To all of you:
My cousin actually travels abroad to find his healthcare, rather than risk the statistics here, or become a part of the broken system. He has chosen not to engage our system.

To all of you:
My friend David lost his mother this year, who was barely 60, because she fell into the cracks of our Insurance-Industrial-Complex. The system said Fuck You to her, and now she is dead.

To all of you: if you don't already, you WILL have a close family member who will be adversely affected at the least--or dead at the ultimate worst--because our system of caring for one another's health and well-being is so completely ass-backward, profit-driven, and set up to work best for those who have the most. For those with the least, you are on your own. I can't believe what passes for morality in your heads and hearts.

And you right wingnut jobs act like we are all just mindlessly following slogans about healthcare reform, just because you don't want to hear it, or even debate it. Well, you will lose, and you will be defeated. Because you are wrong, and you are on the wrong side of history. The history of this country is built and defined by the defeat of many such awful moments in our collective past, in which we've resteered our course to actually commit to giving a damn about each other. Click away and update your status on Facebook, attack people who've been through the worst in life, that you don't even know... but how about you show some compassion conservatives? Is there any in there?

The Math is Pretty Simple, Really.

Not to mention the simple moral dividends.

*Sigh*

Thanks be to Buddha that Tom Tomorrow can see humor in our world, still.

Newsclipping of the Day :: Speak Loud, Speak Clear

HERE is a great piece from yesterday's Huffington Post, continuing to sound the bell to Democrats that they'd better get their collective act together. It's so true that they've allowed the Repulicans to brand themselves as well as the Democrats for just about all of my adult life. There are so many things they should be saying, and saying again, and again and again... such as:

"...the reality is that millions of Americans are out of work, and most hard working Americans have lost nearly half of their wealth, and many their homes, because of the way George W. Bush and the radical Republican ideologues who enabled him ran the government--and ran it into the ground. The reality is that we had a surplus when Bill Clinton left office, and the only reason President Obama inherited a $1.2 trillion deficit that now constrains him is that George W. Bush and the radical Republicans believed in handing out suitcases full of cash to their wealthy friends with no strings attached and no transparency. Personally, I think that bears saying, and I think it particularly bears saying every time those same Republicans preach fiscal discipline, heap scorn on government "bailouts" they both necessitated and engineered, or offer their quasi-religious answer of "the free market" to every problem the market has created or failed to solve, from the crisis in the housing industry and the lack of regulations on Wall Street that took down our economy (and the world economy along with it) to the fact that most working Americans are now afraid of changing jobs for fear of losing their health insurance. Republican politicians would certainly be a little less quick to step up to the microphone if they knew that every time they talked about fiscal discipline, a Democrat would be there to remind them that they were the ones who went on a 6-year spending spree with our children's money and then handed the better part of a trillion dollars out to Wall Street bankers and speculators, sacrificing the American taxpayer at the altar of their free-market extremism."

War on Entrenched Interests

If any of you are NOT getting enough of Obama these days (last week's unofficial, brilliant State of the Union Address notwithstanding), you might enjoy going HERE to enjoy his weekly radio addresses. In last Saturday's he basically declared war on the entrenched special interests in Washington and told them: no more business as usual. I'm so glad we have this guy. Just consider this choice quote as a teaser:

"I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

"So am I."

Post 501

If any of you want to read a thrillingly depressing view of American History of 2008, please see THE FIFTY MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE OF 2008. It certainly was an eventful year last year, wouldn't you agree? This list is a startling litany, but i find that i agree with much of this rather extreme criticism. Even Barack Obama makes the list, albeit at number 50. This piece is spot on in its criticisms of him.

If for no other reason, go and read this just for the hyperbole. It's incredible.

Protest Discrimination

HERE is a site organized to protest the Proposition 8 Hate that went through last week in California (and other states as you know). Apparently, next Saturday, November 15 at 10:30 am, simultaneous protests all over the country are going to happen. I think Steven and I will go to Columbus with anyone we can bring along from Athens (unless some good souls start a group in Athens!). Thanks to KELLY for posting this.

I am so sick about the Morman Church sponsoring hate like this. They spent MILLIONS in California on this, mounting a propaganda campaign full of lies. Really. Check it out HERE and be sure to see the youtube clip there of the opposition's commercial.

The Morman Church deserves to have its Tax-Exempt status revoked NOW. For starters.

Palin as President

HERE is an incredibly fun what if interactive regarding Ms. Palin's potential impact on life, love, the world. Be sure to click on everything in the scene, multiple times. And turn your sound up.

Campaign 2008 :: Unbelievable Advertising

This is from the nutjobs in the village freaking about Proposition 8 in California. I'm speechless.



I can't wait for a week to pass so i can stop feeling compelled to post these atrocities.

Sure hope Obama is going to unleash some Culture Peace.

"When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out."

--Martin Niemöller, 1976

The Republicans Are Looking More and More Like a Lynch Mob

THIS MUTILATION HOAX is really so unbelievable. The McCain campaign is looking so incredibly desperate, out of control, grasping at straws. I think we are going to see a lot of anger this week. And i bet an explosion of dubious volunteers like this Ashley Todd, doing what they can to "help."

The Republican Party is Looking More and More Like a Lynch Mob

This woman is a United States Congresswoman. Michelle Bachmann is the new poster child of Republican intolerance, racism, and insanity. I'm sure you've all heard about her performance on Chris Matthew's Hardball last Friday, in which she--in a chillingly McCarthyesque kind of way--called for an investigation into the anti-
Americanism of Barack Obama and other liberals.

This is what happens when people who can not think for themselves become cogs in a machine they don't understand.



The more i see of her, the more i wonder how the people of Minnesota EVER elected her.

If you'd like to make a campaign contribution to her opponent, do so HERE

I Prayed, and It Worked!

RELIGULOUS is here today!

Run! The Liberals Are Coming! Run!

My friend Scott --a conservative with a functioning conscience and intellect, unlike some Republicans these days--sent me THIS tragic the-sky-is-falling oped piece from the Wall Street Journal. The Democrats might make sure we all have health insurance! Effective schools! Increase voting participation! Run for the hills!

Robert Borosage has a nice laugh about the terror of it all.

Don't panic people. We can and will survive a realignment of our priorities. Some who read the Wall Street Journal are going to have to carry their fare share, however.

This Woman is Brilliant

Rachel Maddow is so exceedingly good at exposing the empty rhetoric of conservative bloviators. She is perfect at dealing with these kind of idiots playing a game of exquisite corpse with the conservative movement's exponentially incoherent talking points, bankrupt ideologies, and increasingly exposed hidden agendas. What a creep and a hypocrite and a liar Frum shows himself to be:



I hope we are going to see much, much more of Maddow. I always liked her radio program on Air America, but TV is really her medium. Her presence, poise, and command of the situation, as it unfolds, makes her one of the best journalists working today. It's really too bad she could not be the moderator for any of the debates. Someday, perhaps.

What Our Economy Needs

I've been reading about the Senate's version of the bailout, which i guess is going to be voted upon today. One GOOD PIECE, by DDAY over at Hullabaloo, makes a great case for how out of whack our economy is. Unless we have a balanced economy, with a healthy manufacturing sector to counteract the paper-pushing sector, we will remain out of whack, as DDAY notes in his criticism of the bill up today in the Senate:

"As for the "progressive alternative" from Rep. DeFazio, it doesn't read to me as much of an alternative at all. The good part of it, raising the FDIC insurance limit, is in the Senate plan now, and the rest of it seems to just be a new way to give away money. The change away from mark-to-market accounting, which has the potential to be hideous as companies make up numbers and the entire financial services industry becomes Enronized, is a fait accompli thanks to the SEC. David Sirota seems to like it, but I fail to see how it would do anything to stop foreclosures or alleviate the housing crisis. It may, I repeat may, save money on the initial layout, as there's no price tag attached. If it's administered the way that they fixed the S&L's, it could be cheap. But it doesn't even begin to try and solve the problem.

The problem, folks, is that the largest sector of the private economy is financial services, in other words people pushing paper to other people, while manufacturing is at its lowest level in decades. That is historically unsustainable and impossible, and invites crises like this, and no amount of figuring out a creative accounting fix and some kind of bailout on the cheap is going to change that. Only by creating a new energy economy, allowing for 5 million new green-collar jobs, and building a manufacturing base again to match the knowledge economy will we ever have an economic system in any kind of balance. Yet only the Senate bribery bill even brooches that subject."

Anyhow, i agree with DDAY that we ought to pass a stopgap that stops the hemorrhaging, but waits for a real fix until after the election and a new President and a new Congress can take it up. We've got to stop being the world's military force (DDAY calls us GLOBOCOP which is perfect), we've got to solve our energy dilemma, and we have got to stop allowing our financial sector to continue to kill the manufacturing sector.

Praying This Will Come to our Little Town!

And the OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Let us all fall down and thank brother bill for tackling this subject.

“Since starting on Politically Incorrect in 1993, it has been my pleasure over the last decade and a half to make organized religion one of my favorite targets. I often explained to people, ‘I don’t need to make fun of religion, it makes fun of itself.’ And, then I go ahead and make fun of it too, just for laughs.

With religious fanatics like George Bush and Osama bin Laden now taking over the world, it seemed to me in recent years that this issue—this cause of debunking the man behind the curtain—needed to have a larger, more insistent and focused forum than late night television. I wanted to make a documentary, and I wanted it to be funny. In fact, since there is nothing more ridiculous than the ancient mythological stories that live on as today’s religions, this movie would try to be a real knee slapper. Unless, of course, you’re religious, then you might not like it.

Who could I get to direct me on such an epic event? In reality, there was only one man, and his name is Larry Charles. I hope that together we fulfilled that quest. Which really isn’t that hard, considering that comedically speaking, the topic of religion is pretty much hitting the side of a barn.

As a comedian, religion has always interested me—it was the single easiest subject to make jokes about. I think that tells us something: comedians look for things that don’t make sense, that are illogical.

Even as a young comedian, routines I did that got the biggest laughs and got me invited back on the Tonight Show were the religious ones—like the one about being half Catholic and half Jewish and bringing a lawyer into confession: ‘Bless me father for I have sinned—and I think you know Mr. Cohen…’

Politics is a rich area, but even politicians, although they promise some ridiculous stuff, don’t approach the level of, for example, the Mormon practice of promising couples a planet to rule over in the after life if they have a really good marriage on earth. They give you a planet—kinda like when someone gives you a certificate that says a star has been named after you—except here, they really give you the star!

Join me in this final battle between intelligence and stupidity that will decide the future of humanity. Coming soon to a house of false idols near you.”

-Bill Maher

Newsclipping of the Day :: It's All Just a Game. A Very, Very Nasty Game

"A box of Obama Waffles is seen in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008. A vendor at a conservative political forum was selling boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap. The product was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix and sold it for $10 a box at the Values Voter Summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council."

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Can we just talk about this for a sec? I know you all have busy days, but just for a minute.

The above is from Yahoo News today. I wish there were a way to not only boycott, but withhold every penny from media sources that publish crap like the above. I've had my yahoo email account for more than 10 years now. But apparently Yahoo News has been invaded by the Media Snatchers.

Yahoo News for crissakes!

They cover this "story" like it is real news. They are trying so hard to have their messages of hate and deceit keep us all divided.

They are all trying SO hard to change the subject. To make it all about Sarah's beehive. Or John's service as a POW. Or lipstick on Pigs. It's all so full of lies and deceit and obfuscation and insult. I am SOO not proud of my country these days.

I apologize to all Americans who are the countless victims of this kind of baiting and insult. The people behind the image above--and the "news" organizations giving it air--are so wrong and so destructive. If you want to kill yourselves, fine, but leave the rest of us out of it and stop dragging us all down. We are all doing just fine.

I applaud Obama for sticking to the high road. I'm happy to see Obama have a laugh over whole Pig-With-Lipstick episode with David Letterman. Not only is he talented, creative, smart, and prepared, but he also knows how play the game by his rules, and not those of the other side. He knows how to have his values and principles without killing them in the process of leveraging them.

Sure, the culture war's machine of lies, smears, and insult is going to win over a few votes. But in the main, it's going to backfire. Stunningly.

And the tactics of desperation we are all seeing now in the media are so completely stomach turning, i'd wager that they will drive away many more votes than the smears win over. People are not stupid. Conservatives need a new party. Liberals need a new party. And i'm not talking about ONE.

And sure, the Republican Party may be in shambles after November, but what of the GAZILLIONS of dollars going to all the crony capitalists and "outsourcers" in place of what used to be our Government? How will all of that be undone? What will Congress and our new President do to codify the limits of power of the Executive Branch? Will they do anything? Will the destruction of our Government we've seen in recent years pale in comparison to what is to come?

One thing is for sure. We will never have our Government back, the way it was before conservatives began feeding off of it and destroying it, more than a generation ago.

What will be left? How will we go forward? Will we even be able to rebuild?

Who do you trust to answer those questions? Please click on the comments link below and tell me.